Personal Honor
by Neteret
Summary: One crime invades Horatio's sense of what is right while another crime can only be solved by detective work and reasoning.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Horatio Caine stood outside of the building that housed both the Miami-Dade Police Department and the Crime Scene Investigation Laboratory. His golden red hair glinted as he bowed his head looking for all the world like he was merely examining the cuticle on the forefinger of his left hand. The CSI detective was doing that but that wasn't where his attention was focused. He was more aware of his surroundings than most people looking directly at them would be; he was enjoying the breeze that stirred the soupy humid air, and he was listening to the various rhythms of the footsteps of the men and women strolling around the building, striding, standing on the premises, going in, coming out of the peculiarly slanted building behind him. He was almost inhaling the glorious blue sky that surrounded the ever present towering clouds being swept up from the southern Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet, none of this occupied his thoughts. Yes, if asked, he could have reported most every detail of his surroundings; noticing everything was in his nature. It's just that, none of that was important to him at the moment. Instead, right then, his thoughts were aimlessly wandering on how good it was to be alive. This was one of those rare days when no new major crime had been committed in the last twenty-four hours. His team was occupied with wrapping up examinations of evidence from previous cases and he knew he could well be doing his own job of writing reports, going from section to section, helping anyone who was swamped. He knew he would do that, in a moment or two, just not now. It wasn't often he could take advantage of being the head of the CSI team so while he could, he would.

Horatio raised his head and took a deep slow breath. He shifted his position, widened his stance and, without realizing what he was doing, using his left hand, swept his jacket back to reveal the gold detective badge attached to his belt. His right arm, bent at the elbow, hovered protectively over his pistol still under his jacket. No one here needed to be reminded that he was armed. When he had to face anyone who might resent his office, he never hesitated to show both his holstered gun and his right to use it if necessary.

God! But he enjoyed being a police officer! He always had, from the days of being a blue in New York City, to his move here to Miami and all through his rise to his present position. 'To Protect and Serve' was a motto he felt honored to carry. More, he was privileged to work with men and women who felt the same way, followed the same code, risked their lives, gave so much.

"Hey, Horatio." A honeyed southern tone wound around the greeting.

Detective Calleigh Duquesne greeted him as she continued by. Even though they had talked that morning, making sure each, boss and second in command, knew what the other had on their schedules, she always acknowledged her team mates every time she saw them.

"Calleigh." Horatio returned the greeting to the green eyed blond and smiled back at her flash of teeth. Beautiful as she was, his first thought towards her was, as usual, what an unusually fine police officer she was. She wasn't just smart, she was brilliant when it came to deduction. Then, even as good as he knew he was at interviews and interrogation, she was better. It was almost fun to watch her turn on that Old Southern Charm, lead her subject into a false sense of security at having duped this blond Belle into explaining away the crime, and then see her coldly announce her victim's arrest and the charges. More as far as forensics went, no one in the department could bring the convictions home like she did.

"Horatio."

A deep, Texas tinged voice rumbled into his reverie. "Frank?" Not turning, Horatio didn't have to inquire why he was being addressed. The twenty-four hour truce between the law and murder had ended.

Frank Tripp hung on the open door to the lobby of the building. "D.b. out at the old Flats Farm. I'll meet you out there." The Police Detective Sergeant pulled his bald head back and disappeared behind the darkened glass.

Horatio pulled his phone out and pressed a number. "Calleigh, Flats Farm."

For just the briefest moment, Horatio hesitated and moved his head slightly in a shaking movement. The moment of truce between law and crime had been nice while it lasted.

Stepping down from the silver humvee, the six foot redhead adjusted his sunglasses against the overhead glare. Calleigh had already arrived and was doing a quick sweep of the outside area of the crime scene. Frank was huddled with a group of three uniforms and one man in a suit and tie, like himself. They all stood at the open hangar sized door of the large barn. Calleigh nodded in Horatio's direction and continued her work. When Frank spotted him he pointed to the inside of the structure. They knew Horatio would go inside to look at the body. He always asked to do this, not only to perform alone a sort of ritual of last rites for the murder victim but to get a first look at the crime scene.

The barn was unusually large. Inside, along each wall were the remains of heavily constructed stalls, fifteen to a side. In the middle was a line of poles about four feet high; some with rings still hanging from near the top on one side. Attached to one side of the warehouse sized building, a silo rose to about seventy feet. Inside, a single door about a third of the diameter of the silo allowed entrance into the round confines of the connected structure. It stood wide open. Crossing the huge dirt floor that was littered with leaves and twigs, walking past the large squares of sunlight streaming through large broken windows high off the ground, the closer to the silo he approached the more the detective's head fell to one side. As his head fell, the eyebrows crumpled his forehead together over his intensely blue eyes.

Slowly, almost reverently, Horatio advanced on the crumpled form lying on the ground. A square of light from a trap door in the roof hit the wall above the body's head. The reflected light gave a halo effect to the light brown hair. The closer he got, the more tightly his brows rose in a knot over the bridge of his nose. Finally, by the head of the grotesquely twisted form, he fell to one knee, rustling the ancient detritus left by the remains of tons of corn. One arm draped over his upraised knee, the other in a fist at his belt, his head twisted from one side to the other. His eyes drifted from the honey tangle of locks down to the cotton jacket over the tank top, past the pedal pusher shorts to the feet. One foot was missing the princess flat mate that covered the other. A quick look found the other shoe where it had bounced off, perhaps when the body hit the ground.

Carefully, as if afraid of waking her, Horatio reached down and moved some of the hair from the slightly bloated, discolored face. As he suspected from the clothing, the woman was in her late teens, perhaps early twenties. Her head was slightly raised above her chest so the ligature marks on her neck were plain to see. Someone had taken a heavy cord of some sort and wound it three or more times before pulling it tight, choking her to death.

Oddly, though, the position of the body didn't look like one that had been standing in front of her attacker, struggled, succumbed to a lack of oxygen, and fallen to the ground. Horatio raised his sky blue eyes up the dark insides to the trap door. Coming in, he had seen the metal stair way that wound up the building to the top to a platform that was at the trap door up there.

Horatio allowed his mind to play out two possibilities; the girl had been strangled, carried up to the platform and then tossed down or had been forced to walk up the stairs, then strangled and tossed down. She may or may not have been dead when she was thrown. Whichever it had been, the results had been the same. She was dead now.

Sighing at the regret over the loss of life, he gently laying the lock of hair back across the face, the detective rose. His view now took in the entire length of the twisted form, noting the dust that had risen when the body hit and then settled, laying itself on her clothing. He looked up again at the patch of bright blue in the roof and wondered if, when she had been dropped, that square had been bright as it was now, or dark, with stars peaking through.

A few moments later, Horatio walked up to the group with Frank Tripp.

"Horatio, this is Police Detective Randolph Toler with the Everglades station. The young lady in there is his daughter, Mitzi Toler. She's been missing for a week." The look in Frank's eyes was angry and apologetic. Policeman or not, a father had no right to be on the scene of his child's murder.

Horatio's eyebrows shot up forming an upturned arrow. His mindset was the same as Frank's. "Detective Toler, I'm so sorry for your loss."

Toler's mustached face showed a range of emotions that included how often he had said that phrase in the exact same tone to others, how often he had wondered how he would feel if he heard it, the sorrow he was personally involved in at the moment and more. His gray eyes slowly lost their cloudy haze as he responded, "Thank you." Then without hesitation he launched into the only thing he knew to do. "Officers were here on a routine patrol for this area last night. Every once in a while kids party out here or just cause mischief so it's on a regular part of our routine. My daughter's car is parked over behind the building there. When they saw it, they investigated further and found her. She always came to the station on one excuse or another so everyone knew her. They called me and then I called Miami-Dade for CSI."

Suddenly the voice switched timbre. "I wish you could have known her. She was an angel." The balding man looked down to examine his shoes.

"We'll find who did this."

Eyes with circles and bags and wrinkles looked up at the spoken formula. "Yeah, I know."

Seeing the M.E.'s car arrive behind the ambulance, Horatio directed, "Frank, get the officers' statements and send Toler home. He should be with the rest of his family." He knew it was the kindest thing to do for the moment.

He walked over to the square faced, pale blond medical examiner who always seemed to be in a rush.

"Dr. Loman, can you wait just a moment before recovering the body? We haven't gone over the area around her yet. It won't take a moment."

"If I must. You people are usually the ones in such a hurry for me to get things done for you."

Ignoring the usual complaints, Horatio smiled as he saw Calleigh appear from around the corner. She always seemed to be anywhere he needed her to be when she was needed. Without a word between them, she entered the building and headed towards the silo.

Meanwhile, Tom Loman was not happy. New to the team, he was an efficient, no nonsense medical examiner who knew his job. "If I had known I'd be waiting, I could have stopped off at another scene before coming here."

"My apologies, doctor. I'll keep you in the loop next time."

The sneer was barely hidden. Dr. Loman was a man who always felt underappreciated.

Knowing there was nothing he could say that would make the situation with the M.E. better, Horatio decided to do his own part of the job. Going around to the back of the building, he found a 2000 VW coupe or Bug as it was better known. Too obviously, it had been bought by a loving father and remodeled to fit a favorite daughter's tastes. Besides the flashy chrome rims and the bright pink paint job, the seats had been recovered in dark cream colored leather. As usual, the same brief flash of thought struck at his mind; would he have done the same if he had a daughter? Considering what he'd done for Kyle, the answer, of course, was yes. Just as quickly, the thought faded as he mentally switched his view to magnification of what was at hand. Calleigh had already done a dusting for prints on the doors, the door windows and the roof over the doors. This meant she had also taken photos of any shoe prints.

Pulling a set of rubber gloves from his pocket and putting them on, Horatio slid into the passenger seat and opened the glove compartment. There was nothing inside but a city map, a package of a plastic knife, fork and spoon with a napkin bearing a popular taco shop name wrapped in cellophane and several mini-compacts of makeup. If there was anything deeper, under what was visible, he'd let the forensic team at the lab handle it.

Next he ran his hands quickly under the seat and then leaning over, did the same under the driver's seat. There wasn't even an empty soda can. This was typical of most girls. Turning around, looking at the back seat, he saw an array of blouses, jackets, and shoes. Girls use their cars for carrying wardrobe changes; boys use them as trash haulers. The fact that the clothing was in a neat pile showed she hadn't used the area for anything else, not recently anyway.

"Is it okay for Tom to take the body? I'm done and he's really champing at the bit."

"Yes, Calleigh."

Calleigh opened her phone, punched a button, and said, "Take her away, Dr. Loman. We'll see you at the lab."

As soon as she hung up, she turned attentively to the man who, if she wasn't wearing her heels, would be almost a foot taller than she.

"Calleigh, did you know the victim is the daughter of a police detective?"

"Yes, Frank told me when I arrived."

"Yet, not only did she come out to a remote area, she parked her car in back of the building. Does that strike you as odd?"

The slightest frown briefly bridged the blonde's nose. "You'd think she would have better sense. Of course, being a law officer's child doesn't preclude innocence. Do you think she was involved in something she shouldn't have been?"

"Even so, this doesn't seem right."

"I also noticed those other tire tracks next to her car here. Notice how wide the tread is?"

"I do. Gives good traction and control but it's not your usual passenger car size."

"Could be a high end drug dealer in a fancy ride."

Horatio silently nodded. There were many possibilities which were getting both of them nowhere in particular at this point.

Forty minutes later, Horatio stood up from the side of another young girl, the same age, and general description as young Mitzi. This girl had been found in at the foot of an observation tower in one of the Everglades parks. Marks of manual strangulation were apparent on her throat. She was partially nude from the waist up and her short skirt had been hiked to above her hips. Still, the resemblance to what he had seen earlier was unmistakable. In this case, the death had been much more recent, within the past twelve hours.

He drew Ryan Wolfe aside. His voice rumbled as he whispered, "We just found another girl, but the kill was perhaps a week old. I think we may have a serial killer on a rampage here. Get the evidence and start working on it immediately."

Ryan's large eyes glinted. "Don't worry Horatio, we'll stop him before he can do too much damage."

"I'd prefer, Mr. Wolfe, that we stop him before he does any more damage at all."

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Sally Brandt sat stewing as she glared at the flat screen monitor in front of her. She wasn't sure if the job trade off she'd been sucked into was worth the boredom. It had taken a year of cajoling by everyone from the Mayor of Miami to the indomitable Horatio himself before she had finally said yes to being the one and only Miami-Dade forensic psychologist. Before, she had covered four counties, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Martin. Admittedly, she hadn't been able to do her best work then. She had spent more time on the roads going from crime locations, to the police station to do her reports, and then off to another location than actually analyzing the scenes. Here, she could give every crime scene the examination it required, attend on each criminal all the attention needed and she didn't need a new car every two years. The other three counties now had another overworked forensic psych to use up. A passing feeling of pity made her smile ruefully.

All well and good except for one problem; since the forensic work load was lighter, she had been given secondary duties. Now she was the department shrink as well. Not only did she have to counsel the members of the force when they'd had to face traumatic circumstances like shooting someone or getting shot, she also had to review everyone officer's psych performance on a regular basis. She also had to examine the files of people who were being considered for hiring. What dumbass thought anyone could tell anything about anyone by looking at their jacket? Those psych tests the applicants took were almost useless!

Suddenly a thought occurred to her. What if they attached wav files to applicant records? Vocal responses in an interview would give a great deal more information than a written answer to the standard questions. Sally grabbed one of her notebooks from her desk drawer. She used those rather than her computer note pad for brief ideas. When she felt like making waves for later reference, she would go to her notebooks and take the thoughts to her supervisors or to department chiefs. She knew the ideas had a snowball's chance in hell to be taken seriously but it was fun to make the supervisors be polite on occasion.

Once she had made the note and returned the book to the desk, the internal conversation about her plight continued; 'What are you crabbing about? You knew what you were getting into as far as evaluation goes. You thought you might like the idea, at first. The notion that your word makes or breaks a career is powerful stuff; not even you could resist that. Face it, Gal, you like being in control!' Then she made a face, 'So, to avoid overuse of the power, you have to be coolly analytical which is boring.'

Sally's eyes floated over the gray furniture, the light gray walls, the ambient light from overhead that seemed to be gray, to the gray window by the door that let in bright silver light from the hallway but not any clear view in either direction. She knew this allowed for a soothing effect on people, a feeling of quiet calmness. After a few months of spending a large part of her time here, however, the effect was one of pure monotony.

She went back to her line of thought. 'Boring office, boring to be a clinical psych, ah, but the time you get to spend on the cases is a real luxury; to say nothing of how great it is to live in Miami.' She smiled. 'To say nothing of how nice it is to work with Horatio Caine.'

A secondary voice chimed in, 'And don't forget, they do let you out of your cage to go to other counties on occasion to help Morgan Tuttle, the other psych. Sure, the leash is kept tight so you don't wander off, so they can jerk you back for their own purposes but, at least you can get some fresh air once in a while.'

Her cell sounded softly. It was Ryan Wolfe.

"You can tell if someone is telling the truth or not, can't you?"

Sally had to pause before answering. Ryan's voice was a little hostile as it always seemed to be when he spoke with her.

"No better than a lie detector machine. Why?"

"Could you come up here anyway? I've got something you might be able to handle."

When the elevator doors silently parted Sally could see Ryan waiting for her. He looked relatively calm and relaxed but she knew that was the façade many mildly obsessive-compulsive personalities maintained. No doubt he had called her when standing in front of the elevator and almost expected those doors to open as soon as he had closed his phone. The ten minutes it had taken her to take a bathroom break, grab her computer note pad and ride from the first to the second floor must have seemed interminable to him. That, however, would only have been noticed by her so she ignored it.

"What's up?"

"We've got a young woman here with the same story that four other women have told in the last six months. They say they've been molested by a police officer."

"How is that here in this department? Isn't that a matter of police detective work, not CSI?"

"It's been kicked up here because if it is a police officer, we've got to find him. The first four stories came in weeks after the fact from different precincts but all occurred in the same general area. This happened four days ago.

"Do you want me in with you or observing through the glass?"

Wolfe looked uncomfortable. "She's pretty shaken so I think a woman's touch is needed here. Calleigh is out in the field and Boa Vista has the day off."

Ryan filled her in with the bits of information the young woman had given when she came in. Taking it all into consideration, Sally approached her with care. She took a chair from beside the young woman and pulled it out to face her, then invited the girl to turn her chair so she could do the same. In a sterile room such as this, this was as much as she could do to remove any barriers between herself and the frightened young woman.

Like so many women who have been through a humiliating experience, the girl, nineteen year old Maria Lopatra, was hesitant, at first, to discuss more than generalities. Returning home from a night school class, she had been driving out on the old Tamiami Trail Highway toward the glades. She had seen the flashing lights in back of her, pulled over and had stopped. The car had then pulled up beside her and the officer inside had motioned for her to follow him. He had then driven a mile or so down the road and had pulled off onto a dirt trail surrounded by trees. After about half a mile in, he had stopped and gotten out and asked her to step out of her car. He asked her a couple of questions about her age and where she lived, then said he needed to ask her more questions and to get into the front seat of his car. He then said the police were investigating some man who was molesting a particular type of young women and need to know if she fit into this category.

This is where Maria started stumbling over her words, unable to get some of them out. As she talked, her head fell forward and her long dark hair hung in veil hiding her face. She quoted the humiliatingly personal questions he'd asked, the color of her pubic hairs, her bra cup size, whether she wore panties or not. As he asked, she'd said, he touched each area. Then she amended her comment saying he had rubbed each area, lightly, as if feeling them.

After a moment of silence, she looked up with a pleading look. "Is this what should have happened? I'll just go home and forget about it if I'm wrong, if I shouldn't be complaining. I thought they brought people into police stations to ask questions like that. I mean, what happened out there really made me feel awful. It was dark and—and I was so scared!" She dropped her face into her hands and moaned.

As much as Sally wanted hug and comfort this hurt child, she needed to make her observations even more. She did reach out to touch Maria on her knee. "No, your discomfort was genuine, not wrong. This man was terribly in the wrong. Why did you let him do it? I mean, even if he was a police officer but surely you know no man can touch you that way if you object."

"I know!" Maria's voice carried a distinctive lilt but Sally couldn't quite pinpoint the origin. "It's just that, right then, his voice sounded kind. He sounded like, you know, like he needed my help. He asked if he could touch me, too. It seemed like the touching was to be sure I knew what he was talking about."

"What happened next?"

Maria was more animated now. "Then it really got weird. He started talking about how I would know this predator. He said at first, it would seem really innocent and he'd get me alone someplace, maybe in his car. He said then the guy would kiss me in a certain way but that he'd have to show me and asked if it would be alright. I thought it would be like a kiss on the cheek or my neck but it was on my chest. While he was doing it, he put his hand on my breast and squeezed it, pushing it up."

Maria started hyperventilating as she remembered the panic she had felt.

Sally waited a moment for the girl to calm down before she asked the next question. "Did you try to stop him then?"

"Yeah, I said I understood and pushed at him. I didn't want to be rude, to a policeman, you know, so I didn't push hard. He sat up and leaned back and then he really got strange. You know? He started to describe what this guy would do next, only it was like he was describing what was going on in a porn movie while he was watching it. You know? He started breathing hard and fast and even moaned a little, saying the guy would feel me all over, squeeze my breasts, only he called them tits, and then he'd get his Big John out and get inside me…all that detail. He rubbed at his groin too. For a minute, I was afraid he'd open his zipper, but he didn't."

"His Big John, is that the term he used?"

Maria nodded and made a face of distaste.

"Did he make any advances on you while he was talking touch you again?"

"No. He just sat there, looking at me. At first it like he was hoping I'd get all hot listening to that. I've seen that look on some guys' faces. Then, it was like he was in his own little world. When he came to the end, he sort of shuddered. If I didn't know better, I'd say he had a climax right there. It was so strange since he wasn't even touching me then"

"When were you able to leave?"

"Right after that. He asked if I understood, I said I did and he said I'd better go on home. He even got out with his flashlight and lit my way so I could get to my car. I drove right here."

"Since he didn't actually assault you, what made you want to report it?"

"It's funny but my first thought was that maybe if the police had a sketch of this guy they're looking for, I'd be able to help find him. I watch all those cop shows. You know? If this police guy was going to go through all of that to make me aware of a possible danger, I wanted as much information as I could get. Then, on the way, I realized maybe this guy was the perp himself."

Sally smiled at the word, perp. "So you came in, said how you'd gotten the information you had and wanted more."

"It's so strange though. I know he was a policeman! The car had all the markings on the outside and all the equipment on the inside."

"Well, Maria, let's hope this is some guy who's got a real good disguise and a better mockup for a car. I think we're done here and I thank you for your help. You did a good job."

Leaving Maria for a moment, Sally stepped outside to talk to Ryan. He had been observing through the slanted mirror window from the small hallway behind the interview room.

"No rape, but an assault for sure. From the language he used, the guy could very well have been a cop."

Wolfe dropped his head briefly. When he raised it again, his face carried a look of unjustified pain.

"Damn!" he said quietly.

"You okay?"

He raised his head defiantly. "I'm angry like any cop would be. One bad cop and a thousand suffer for it."

Sally reached out to Ryan's shoulder. He shook it off. Ignoring the slight Sally continued, "Don't take it personally. There are a lot of professions that people don't like, like shrinks, for instance. Then one goes around the bend and everyone thinks we're all nuts."

Ryan's eyes rolled in bored disgust.

"Anyway, I think I got about as much as anyone could. I left my card with Ms Lopatra and if she remembers anything more, I'll relay it on to you."

Ryan nodded and turned away.

Not worrying about what Ryan's problem with her was, Sally strolled to the elevator. On her way, she looked hopefully around the many glass enclosed lab areas and up to the glass walled office of Lieutenant Caine.

'Stop you silly girl! You've got nothing of any importance to discuss with him. Yes, and passing the time of day would be nice, only you've got work to do.'

The two of them had been playing pussyfoot with each other for some months now. Sally knew he was interested in her; she was certainly interested in him. However, she was determined to allow him to make the first move and so far, all he had done was find excuses to talk to her when there was no reason, and smile shyly at her. They had occasionally had lunches and even dinners while discussing cases but nothing more. Yes, IAB frowned on interoffice romances and perhaps Horatio was just following the rules. He was definitely a stickler for rules and doing the right thing.

This was frustrating for her. On the other hand, maybe that is what kept him at arm's length; her reputation for being something of a rebel and her flirtatious behavior with him from the start. Or maybe it was her looks that had him deciding she wasn't for him. Jeez! It wasn't as if she was looking to marry the man or even go steady!

'Yeah, and I'm not totally enamored with those bluer than blue eyes or that delicious gold red hair or that voice that twangs my whatevers every time he speaks.'

On the way down to the first floor and then walking to her office, Sally considered the information she had received. It wasn't enough to even begin to draw up a profile. Obviously the man had first tried to get the girl sexually aroused under seemingly harmless questioning and touching. When that didn't work, he might have hoped that kissing her chest and squeezing her breasts would work. Finally, he may have been carried away by his own fantasies. This could apply to any man from age thirty to fifty-five. From the lack of pressure starting from the time he had indicated her to follow him to taking her into his car and then letting her go, he was used to compliance without complaint. This could be a police officer or even a mild mannered control freak. The police car, if fake, showed attention to details which, again, fit into the age range.

After staring at her observational notes for about half an hour, she gave up. One report was simply not enough. Tomorrow she would call up to the lab and see what forensics had found, if anything.

In response to Sally's call, Ryan asked, "Did you get anything out of what Maria told you?" His voice had a hopeful note.

"'fraid not, m'friend. Some of it could be cop behavior but it could be a variety of other types too. Can you call in those other girls? Maybe I'll hear something else from them."

"I'll give you the names and numbers." His voice had that familiar ring that said, 'I'm busy so you do the leg work.'

Shrugging, Sally closed her phone but opened it again at a familiar ring. "Good morning Horatio."

The whispery voice poured through the phone like warm honey. "Good morning, Sally. How are you doing?"

"Well, and you?"

"Could be better. Would you like a field trip?"

"What's up?"

"Young girl found yesterday out at an old barn. Dr. Loman says c.o.d. was strangulation but then, for good measure, she was dropped sixty feet."

"I'll meet you at the humvee."

Twenty minutes later, after a road burning trip that brought them to the site ten minutes faster than most drivers would have made it, the silver CSI vehicle slid to a stop.

Stepping to the ground and letting out a breath, Sally oriented herself into the forensic observer. Horatio led her around to the back where the tire tracks still told the tale. The dead girl's car had already been taken to the CSI garage but the tread marks where the car had stopped were plain. Distinctively wider treads showed another car had stopped ahead and to the right of the girl's car. Footprints of a boot with a heavy grooves and ridges showed the killer had walked to the driver's side of the victim's car and then stood back, maybe to let the car door open. Smaller footprints moved from the driver's side and seemed to head to the passenger side of the first car but then hesitate. The smaller footprints got blurry and several overstepped another showing a scuffle. Then, the two moved around the back of the first car. Again the smaller prints were blurry.

"Unless these two were dancing, she was being held against her will."

"I agree. His prints are firm and are spread wide apart to give him a better base to work from."

"You think he had a rope in the back of his car?"

"I'm afraid so. It was wrapped around her neck several times."

Following the steps, Sally continued narrating. "Now her prints disappear so he's carrying her."

"His prints are deeper, more defined so I would agree." Horatio could hardly keep himself from smiling. He had never enjoyed working with his other team mates so much.

"So that silo over in front has stairs on the outside up to the top?" Sally started walking giving wide birth to the prints. At the same time, she was having a hard time keeping her mind on the scene. She and Horatio were going to have to bring this mutual appreciation game out into the open before the quality of their work started to deteriorate.

"This place was built in the days when rich folk liked to play southern gentleman farmer with designer buildings and landscapes. This area was, at one time, swamp land drained by the Army Corps of Engineers and now it is slowly being returned to its original state. This building is about all that's left."

Sally looked around at the variety of trees at the edges of the clearing around the barn. "It is sort of pretty here. I bet there was a plantation style house and several outbuildings."

"Yes, about a quarter of a mile from here."

They had reached the front of the barn and Horatio followed Sally up the metal stairs that wound around the silo. The psychologist was back into her observation mode and wasn't conscious of the appreciative glances Horatio was giving her shapely legs as the material from her A-line skirt slapped and wrapped around them at each upward step.

"Everything here is still solid. Even as old as this place is, I see little signs of wear or damage. Why did the owner need to see his store of corn from the top?"

"As I understand it, Jacob Flat was superstitious and performed a variety of rituals that he thought would ensure his wealth. One was to top off this silo's store of corn by carrying a bag of it up to the top and pouring it in himself. He was a cattleman and kept his prize bulls in this barn. The corn here, he said, was the best in the world. It made for the best bulls to make for the best cattle…"

"Etcetera and so on. So he built solidly to protect his wealth."

"Then he died of a heart attack and the family donated the land back to the Florida Park Services."

"So much for luck." By this time they had reached the top and Sally was a touch breathless.

While her system slowed she peered into square hole in the silo's roof and down to the dimly lit dirt floor below. "So, Dr. Loman said she died from strangulation."

"Yes." Horatio's voice dropped to a sad whisper.

"Any sexual violation?"

"No."

"How about defensive bruisings?"

The quality of Horatio's voice took on a hopeful note. "No. Whoever killed her did so with no anger and apparently not for any arousal."

"Then, I wonder why he dropped her from up here? I mean, why not just carry her in through the barn and into the rear of the silo?" Vagrant breezes stirred up her wild mix of reddish-brown and gray, hair.

"It's as if he just walked up to her and killed her."

Horatio remained silent. He had learned to listen to Sally's 'thinking out loud' voice.

After a few moments of leaning on her hands, staring down into the darkness, Sally 'thought' again. "It could be this was his first kill. People have a picture of what dead people should look like and it doesn't always fall in line with reality. Maybe he didn't know if she was dead so he wanted to make sure."

"Lack of experience?"

"At killing yes, or at least, let's hope so.

"By the way, did you know there's been a series of sexual assaults in the area? All of the victims declare that it was a police officer. In each case, there was no violence and no penetration."

Sally couldn't help but notice the change in Horatio's voice; it lowered in volume with a hard edge and tempered with a fiery pitch. "If it's the same man, it's escalated."

Sally's eyes rolled around the possibilities characteristics of criminal behavior. "I'd say so 'if' it's the same man." Her voice took on a cautionary tone.

"You don't think it is?"

"From what I heard of the other murder case, no. If the four girls that we know of were accosted by a fake police officer, then this one might be the same man. I don't know about the one over in the park. Similar M.O. but a bit far off the mark."

Dr. Loman said the other girl didn't die from the strangulation although there were signs of compression on the windpipe. He suspects the man used his hands. Her death was caused by a broken neck in the fall."

Sally leaned back against the railing and crossed her arms. "I don't know. We're either working with two different men, one who assaults and one who kills, or we've got one confused dude out there. These murders could mean the killer just hasn't found his preferred method yet."

Horatio sighed. Not only was there nothing nice in his business, nothing was ever easy.

As if having just arrived, Sally suddenly exclaimed, "I just noticed! What a beautiful view from here!"

Before turning to look, Horatio couldn't help but admire the look on Sally's face. When this lady enjoyed something, she did so with every fiber of her being. Her double black lashes made happy half moons of her clear ice blue eyes. Her pink cupid's bow mouth opened and stretched. A few freckles disappeared into the dimples on her cheeks.

He had to admit, there was something he found extremely attractive about Sally. No, amend that; he found everything about Sally extremely attractive. It wasn't just her mind and her working methods; her slim, almost boyish figure was intriguing, made his hands itch to explore it. Her ice eyes, of course had a strangely hypnotic effect he truly enjoyed thinking about.

Before he could be caught staring, he turned to take in the view of the everglades and the trees. "Yes, it is beautiful, isn't it?"

"H."

Eric Delko had the look of a CSI who hadn't yet finished his assignment to go over every square inch of a crime scene. He was tired, disgusted and nearly cross-eyed. He addressed his boss as Horatio and Sally stepped off the stairway.

"Eric. Have you finished yet?"

"Just about. It's the same story all over the place. Apparently, this place was regularly used by two different groups. Or maybe I should say several party groups and one or more cars like the one that accompanied the victim's car here."

Horatio fell into his familiar stance of interest; he turned sideways to Delko, his feet spread wide, his hands knitting together, his head cocked to one side. "And you know this how?"

"By groups I mean kids or young adults who came out here to party on a regular basis. I found remnants of everything from bottles and cans, tokes to party pills and little baggies that had traces of meth."

"Yes, the local officers knew about this."

"Then there was a single car or at least the same type of car that parked here a whole lot of times."

"Where?"

"I found treads in the dirt inside the building, out here in front, over there where the shade would have been deep in the summer, and especially in back. It wasn't just the fresh tread next to the vic's car but stuff that was several weeks old. Most is nearly washed away by the rains but the stuff under the trees and then inside the building could be months old."

"Same car each time?"

"Same type, for sure. Maybe same car with new tires on a regular basis."

"Like a police car?" Sally asked.

Delko raised his head defensively. "Yeah, or a lot of other kinds of cars."

Sally knew better than to push the subject.

"You get molds of the prints?"

"Yeah, several. Also taking the bottles and cans to see if I can find any prints."

"Good work. When you get done, I'll see you at the lab." Horatio's pale, freckled face softened into a look of fondness for the tall dark, Latino Russian team member.

"If I ever get done here. I keep finding new corners, new piles of crap I haven't turned over yet."

"You'll get it done."

Eric's smile looked forced. "Yeah, I know."

Inside the silo, after staring down at the now disturbed ground where the body had lain, Sally looked around at the curved walls. Slowly her eyes traveled upward to the skylight. "Do you know what phase the moon was in the other night?"

"You thinking ritualistic murder?"

"I've seen it before. If the moon was just right, it could have made a square of light on the floor. Seems odd to dump the body and hope it falls in the right place though. Right now, all I've got is this, the death this morning, and four molested girls who all say a cop did it. If ritual were part of it, it would be a hell of mind that dreamed it all up."

"I'll just wait for more evidence, if you don't mind."

In the humvee on the way back to Miami, Sally asked, "You ever stay to help recover evidence?"

"You mean, like helping Eric who is obviously tired and feeling like a piece of cardboard left out in the rain?"

"Something like that."

"Nope." Horatio knew his terseness would beg another question and he dreaded it. He didn't like having his methods questioned.

"I gotta know why not? Wouldn't it be quicker and easier? Wouldn't he miss something after a while?"

Horatio almost smiled. Put this way, the question was less difficult to answer. "For one thing, Eric is the third forensic officer to cover the area. Each officer was looking for something different yet related directly to the crime. Eric was going for anything that didn't belong to the sight naturally, human trash. For another, it would take more time for Eric to explain to me what he has already done, what areas need what sort of examination, than if he just continues to his own end. Also, his analysis will be his picture of the scene and if I do part, his analysis would be incomplete."

Sally tented her two forefingers under her chin and stared down at her knees. Horatio knew this was another of her 'think' poses.

"So, if you helped, you would be messing up his picture?"

"Depends on when I started to help, Sally. If I were with him in the morning when he started, we would divide the area up evenly and cover each separately. No harm, no foul. He has perhaps another hour or two of work at this point and, I have no idea what bits he has already dismissed as harmless detritus as opposed to what he needs to take another look at."

"And you know this how?"

Horatio bobbed his head and ended with his chin slightly raised into the air. "Experience."

"You been there and done that."

"Got the T-shirt, wore it out and use it as a rag now."

"You know it all."

"Nope. That's why I listen to what the team has to say."

Sally nodded and remained quiet for the rest of the ride in.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Calleigh carefully parked the police humvee against the curb. She could have just as well left it in the middle of the street behind the rest of the black and whites sitting at all angles. It just didn't seem right to her to do that, however, so she made sure she was within the marked spaces for parking against the side of the road before climbing out. For being about five foot, three inches tall, that was no easy task. Long experience and a confidence beyond her height and weight, made it appear easy.

After getting her forensics kit from the back of the especially equipped vehicle, she strolled across the street, taking in every bit of the scene; the milling uniformed officers, the plain clothed detectives, standing in front of a nightclub, the blaring neon sign declaring Freddy's Firewater Stand which was losing its battle with the rising morning sun, and more. Even though the crime scene was inside the building, she knew the wisdom of taking in as much of the perimeter as possible. Most especially, she observed the crowd of curiosity seekers. People who committed crimes most often came back to observe the havoc they had created.

Nodding familiarly to most of the unis and plain clothes, flashing her badge on her hip when challenged, the blond wended her way through the open door and into the gloom of the club inside. There, even with all of the lights up, most of the corners barely emerged from deep shadows. She could imagine the club at full tilt at night, the on and off, dark to bright strobes that added to a thunderous beat. The dim quiet of the grisly murder scene was a lullaby in comparison to what was used to urge crowds to a drinking-spending frenzy.

A squealing, raspy voice was wailing over the low hum of investigators who were asking questions of several witnesses, still in shock from the events.

"Closed! Tonight? No way! I got two big parties booked. I'll lose fifty grand! You can't do this."

Calleigh walked towards the shouting. She knew that the object of the wrath had to be Detective Frank Tripp.

"Hey, Frank! What's up?"

The six foot six inch Texan turned without so much as the bat of an eyelash from his attacker. "Hey, Calleigh. In spite of this guy's protests, the 'party' happened last night. Three men came in about ten in the evening and started shooting. Seems the targets were armed and shot back. Then, as far as we can figure, others in the place took objection to having bullets flying around and brought out their own weapons. The long and the short of it is four dead, six more injured and eight arrested for carrying concealed weapons."

"It's not my fault! I've never had anything like this happen in any of my places!"

Frank gave a glance to the light haired, pasty faced man. "Like hell! I remember you from six years ago. You had a place in Little Havana. Two men shot as I remember. I can hardly wait to see your rap sheet now!"

Turning his back to the silenced man, Frank raised his hands to his belt line. "While you figure out who shot what at who and where, I'll throw this one into a patrol car and then see what I can get out of the staff."

Calleigh grinned partly at the private twinkle for her in Frank's eye and partly at the prospect of dealing with guns, bullets, and trajectories. Throwing a twinkle of her own at Frank, she then turned on her well shod heel as well as turning on her CSI mode.

Surveying the scene, she started blocking out what to do first. The bodies were still in place so those had to be photographed. A thought struck her.

"Frank! Is there anyone out there with a large pad and a pencil or pen? I need a rough sketch of the place with all the bodies and furniture and all before Loman gets here."

She knew she could do the sketching herself but this would help get the basic job done much faster.

Ten minutes later a young police officer armed with a large sketch pad introduced herself. "This will put my training to better use than what I've been doing lately. It seems like most of my duties have been just sketching out minor traffic accident scenes."

The young woman's cheerfulness at being able to use her talent for something else faded after the second bloody body. Calleigh could only hope that this experience with the bodies in the nightclub would prepare the rookie for her first truly horrific traffic scene. Her own memories of first arrival on the scene of a bloody car crash as a patrol officer still haunted her dreams.

As luck would have it, just as Calleigh and the officer were comparing the sketch to the scene and deciding they were done, Tom Loman arrived.

"I have two buses out there. Please don't tell me there are more than four bodies." His quietly patient, yet impatient voice carried its usual note of urgency.

"Not only are there four bodies but they're ready to go, Tom."

Ignoring Calleigh's bright grin, the M.E. hurriedly waved to two pairs of assistants with gurneys. "Keep the gurneys at the entrance men. Just bring the bags. There is far too much in the way and we don't have time to rearrange furniture to clear a path." Somehow his tone made the task sound very important.

With the bodies gone and the officer thanked and dismissed to attend to her assigned police duties, Calleigh settled in to find where bullets that hadn't found human targets had gone. Not only would the sources (the size of the guns) be identified but also the paths the carriers of the guns (a timeline). She knew she would get the witness' accounts but those were notoriously out of line with the truth and usually of little help. All she could hope to get from what the people said they had seen was a general idea of where the shooters had entered. Everything after that (who had shot whom) would have to be proven forensically.

Calleigh's lips spread into a small smile because she knew that this is where her work would shine; not only in terms of her career credits, but also in terms of nailing the prison door shut on the men who had come in to this nightclub and without regard for innocent people had fired their guns. Before she was done, not only would she know what gun shot each victim, but in what order the shots were fired. This was not only her favorite work but the kind she was best at. She hadn't been called Bullet Girl for most of her working life for nothing.

Horatio found Calleigh the next afternoon huddled in front of a computer screen.

He whispered, "You called?"

Turning as if she'd seen him coming from behind she said, "I did."

As quietly as Horatio moved, he never could surprise Calleigh no matter how deeply involved in her work she had become.

Then, smiling her brightest self-pleased grin, she said, "I did. I have set up the trajectory patterns of all of the guns used in the nightclub homicide."

"And?"

"Well, it's all pretty straight forward except one death doesn't make sense in terms of all of the other guns and the witness accounts."

Horatio leaned over the table beside Calleigh closely examining the screen. "How so?"

"Here, let me put it up on the big projection." Calleigh pushed a couple of keys and the nearly invisible screen on the wall of the lab lit up duplicating what she had on the smaller computer. "OK, three men with guns entered the club about ten o'clock. The club isn't too crowded so they have a clear line of view from the door to the bar. They started firing at a group of four men sitting at the far end of the bar. I marked those first shots in green regardless of the make of the gun."

The layout of the nightclub appeared on the screen in dull gray showing where the tables, booths and bar were located. A group of green lines from a tight spray toward the far end of the bar appeared.

"Two of those men at the bar had guns and returned fire and I marked them in yellow."

Several yellow lines sprayed out from the far end of the bar.

The three original shooters took cover using some of the tables and then the patrons for shields. One of the three was hit and fell to the floor." A computer generated figure of a man in light blue appeared in a prone position.

"Meanwhile, a patron grabbed the gun from the injured man and started firing both at the two still standing and also at the four at the bar. I marked that path in blue-green."

Several blue green paths joined one of the green origin patterns.

"Two patrons were injured, one from the bar side and the other from the shooter side and then one other was killed from the shooter side. Another two patrons had guns of their own and they started firing which I marked in red, injuring two more patrons. They were hit in the arm and the leg, respectively."

Red paths showed up as well as two more bodies in light blue and one in orange.

"Of the four target men at the bar, two were killed and one was injured, hit in the lower arm. One of the dead ones was by the original shooters and the other was from one of the armed patrons."

Two more orange figures showed behind the bar as well as a blue one. The bullet path was clearly shown from target to origin.

"The other injured one was by the one who took the shooter's gun. The targets, as you can see, had taken cover behind the bar and fired out from there. The three shooters fired from within twenty feet of the entry and forward towards the bar in a fan."

Horatio took a minute to examine the scene and saw exactly what Calleigh knew he would pick up on. "Body number four; the bullet path that you marked in white doesn't coincide with the rest of the source locations. Why is that?"

"That's what I can't figure yet. From the bullet hole in the victim, the gun was a small caliber of some sort It was shot from the hall that goes to the offices, bathrooms and back exit. It goes back into the club. I have to wait for Tom to find the bullet. Victim was Sean Van Meer, twenty-five, no record except for minor traffic violations."

"Yes," whispered the redhead. He turned sideways and spread his legs. "I know the name. He's one of many trust fund babies we have here in Miami."

"I still need a few hours but I think I have the other shootings pretty well nailed down. Most of the shooters have records as long as our hallways. Frank says the incident was gang based."

Horatio's brow knotted in annoyance. "Which makes less sense of young Van Meer's death. These trust kids don't do anything that would ruin their plush lives. They're no angels but they don't get into gangs and the only hard drugs they get are what their daddies get for them to keep them in line."

"Papa Van Meer is going to want some answers, I bet."

Green eyes met blue in perfect understanding. "I'll go back right now before they release the crime scene. Maybe I can find something else in that passage to the offices."

Horatio's stance widened as he raised his hands, swept the skirts of his jacket back and planted his fists behind his badge, parked at his waist, and his gun on the other side. "Good. Keep in touch." This last he said to Calleigh's back as she marched quick step down the lab hallway.

Before his second in command was out of sight, Horatio pulled his cell out of his jacket pocket and punched it. "Mr. Wolfe, what can you tell me about our dead girl found in the Everglades Park yesterday?"

Ryan Wolfe, experienced as he was, was unsettled about this case. He didn't know why but it just gave him a bad feeling. When Horatio called him, nearly twenty-four hours after the body at the bottom of the observation tower had been found, it was hard to even say he didn't have any answers. It wasn't that he was afraid he would be considered slacking in his duties. Sometimes, no matter how diligent an investigator was, clues were not forthcoming at first. To find nothing in a mere day's time wasn't all that unusual. This time, he knew that wasn't the entire answer.

"Wolfe?"

Horatio's voice broke through the sweaty feeling in the young investigator's mind and kicked it into gear. "Uh, yeah, I'm here, Horatio. Her name is Thalia Duda. She actually had a good reason to be at the observation tower. She's a third year zoology student at Florida State. According to her mother, she was taking a course that dealt with night predators in the everglades. I guess she found one."

"Ryan, you sound hesitant on this. Is there something bothering you?" Horatio's voice dropped to an intimate whisper.

The hesitation before the answer was obvious. "Yeah, but I can't figure out what it is."

"Any ideas of how she wound up at the foot of the tower?"

"It looked to me like she went over backwards. Tom says he could find no evidence that she was pushed; I already asked. He did find some odd scrape marks on her back though."

"Odd, like how?"

"He says he isn't sure yet. He wants to run a couple of tests. He did say I should look at the guard rail around the platform."

"You would think that if she was leaning over, trying to get a better look at something out in the glades, she'd be marked on her stomach. How would she get marks on her back unless she was leaning against the railing, looking up at the sky?"

"I don't think that was it. She was leaning back for some other reason."

"What else is putting you on your guard about this?"

"Tire treads."

The words made the hairs on the back of Horatio's neck stand up.

"H, they are the kind of tires police patrol cars use. I could be wrong…" Having been a patrolman, he didn't think he was.

Horatio, his mind racing to find ways to discover another kind of culprit, said, "You know what? I want you to take Dr. Brandt, the forensic psychologist out there. We've got another case involving something suspicious about tire treads and a girl fallen from a tall structure. She might see something or be able to add to what you have so you can get to a conclusion quicker."

After the slightest hesitation, Wolfe replied, "Alright. I'll give her a call."

Horatio recognized the tightness in Wolfe's voice as coming from the usual police antipathy towards shrinks in any form. The rest of the team had accepted Sally after only a minor bit of unrest but Wolfe wasn't quite there yet.

After twenty minutes of uncomfortable silence in the CSI car with Wolfe, Sally stretched her small frame prodigiously and let out a loud yawn. "Man! It feels good to get out of that architectural nightmare!"

Ryan looked over at his companion. "You mean the lab?"

"Oh yeah! I guess I'd feel the same even if the thing didn't look like a listing ship on the outside and the interior of Darth Vader's helmet on the inside. I'm not an office geek. I like to get outside, get my hands dirty, look at the blood and guts, and figure out what kind of idiot might have spread them around where they shouldn't be."

"Don't you like rearranging the furniture inside of people's heads?"

"Not my department, bub. I'm forensics, just like you. The closest I get to that is figuring out why the furniture got scrambled from the upbringing the head had in the first place. No, I shine at the crime scene, looking at how the murderer made the scene the way it was and figuring out what could cause a person to do it in just that way. Then I tell you what kind of person to look for. Didn't you know that?"

Sally knew damned well Wolfe had not the least idea of what her job was about.

"Well, yeah, I did. I just thought you did most of the work by graphs and statistics and all."

"You're closer to that line of work than I am. You have to cart all the evidence back to the lab, run tests, make comparisons, look up information and all. Am I right?"

The youthful looked dark haired man smiled and nodded. "Yeah, that's right. And you don't?"

"Oh, when it comes to testifying in court I have to get all fancy and spout off statistics from this study and that. Once I had to do a couple of graphs for some studies where the results were too complicated to expect a jury to remember. For the most part, however, my testimony is taken as 'expert'. There is no hard proof when it comes to how the mind works. And yeah, I have to read up on studies all time, just like you."

"Yeah, homework, conferences, papers."

"You got that right! Ordinarily, however, most of my work has to be outside; it's just that I'm so good at what I do, they have me doing some office work as well and I am really glad when I can get out of it."

Suddenly Sally pointed. "Oh, look! Over at the side of the road. Blue herons mating!"

A bright blue-gray long legged bird with a long neck was mounting a brownish gray bird of the same build that was slightly bent forward. Not paying attention to the speeding vehicle, the male jumped on and off the presenting female several times.

Sally leaned back with a wicked grin. "Nature! Man or beast! Ain't it wunnerful?"

Wolfe grinned again and cocked an eyebrow at his passenger. "Uh, has anyone ever told you, you are the least bit peculiar?"

By the time they reached the crime scene, CSI Wolfe and Dr Brandt were making each other blush telling dirty jokes.

Horatio was surprised to find Dr. Loman out of his usual venue of the morgue in the basement and in a room in the lab. He was almost shocked to find the man posturing over a bendy-doll as if making love to it. The anatomically correct female doll was bent over backwards, the central lumbar section against a section of four by four railing set between a couple of supports.

"Doctor?"

As if caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Loman stood erect with a jerk. "Damn! I almost had the perfect position! Don't these doors have locks on them? No, I guess they wouldn't, more's the pity."

A brief survey of the scene told Horatio all he needed to know of what was going on. "I'm presuming you took exact measurements of the guard rail."

Assuming his usual attitude of slight distraction, the Medical Examiner, answered, "And now it's just a matter of figuring out how the bruises on the young woman's back were done. There is no subdural bruising on the front of the chest or shoulder which would show she was forcefully pushed and yet she was obviously on her back, stretched over the railing. There are abrasions and bruisings in an area consistent with forcefully leaning and perhaps rubbed against the wood. I was experimenting with various situations in which she could have fallen in that way without being pushed."

"As I came in, you were practically prone over the bendy-doll, almost as if you were about to kiss it."

Loman raised his considerable height to its full six feet, two inches, and drew in his square chin. "It was a last resort." He paused as if allowing the scene he was caught in to replay itself. "Actually, I may have found the answer with just a little bit of readjustment to the figurine."

Intrigued, Horatio watched the doctor who was more comfortable with blood and stomach contents, move the arms of the often abused life sized figure.

"Now, assuming the murderer was at least our height, Lieutenant Caine, I'm also assuming he was making amorous advances onto the victim. He had her against the rail and she, trying to push away, had bent backwards. He continued to press forward thus forcing her back even more."

It would have been hilarious to see the sandy haired doctor practically lying across the doll if the purpose hadn't been so serious. He didn't look uncomfortable in the least acting like he was making love to it. He kept pressing forward until it was physically impossible without endangering the structure of the figuring entirely. Then he adjusted his position slightly.

"Now, this is purely conjecture, but I'll bet I can find the proof on the body. The man sees he can't subdue the young woman or perhaps something alarms him. Whatever the excuse, he's got her in a helpless position. She is continuing to push against him and so he lowers his right arm to the back of her knees. After that, it's a simple matter of lifting up and allowing her push against him to cause her to fall back."

The doctor acted out his words, tossing the dummy over the three foot long duplicate of the guard rail he had set up. Then he went around and picked up the figurine from the floor and examined the back. "Ah ha! As I thought. I applied chalk to the rail and it has transferred to the doll in nearly the exact marks as on the victim." A gentle smile crossed the doctor's face. "I present you with method to the C.O.D."

Horatio's head tipped to one side as he smiled in return. "Good work, Doctor Loman."

"Now, I'm going to seal the S.O.B.'s fate and find out exactly where he put his hands on her to lift her over."

Handing the bendy to Horatio, Loman strode out of the lab looking for all the world like a conquering hero.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"When you said we would be dining al fresco I had no idea just how outdoorsy you meant."

"I hope you don't mind."

"Nope, I like hot dogs. You waiting for results?"

Sally and Horatio were sitting in a small park less than half a block from the lab. The leaning building was invisible, hidden by the fronds of many varieties of palm trees.

Leaning over his hot dog embellished with sauerkraut, mustard and a sprinkling of sweet onions in a tomato sauce, a la New York style, the redhead turned his head sideways. "I am. Eric is going over the strands of rope found embedded in the girl's neck. He's seeing if there are any identifying characteristics in them. We also found trace on both girls' clothing. Then, Dr. Loman is finishing the autopsy."

Though early evening, the pale faced man had found a bench shaded by a grouping of trees. The moist afternoon tropical air retained the same power of melting heat whether shaded or not. The protection he sought was not shade but from the sun's rays. His pale skin got enough of a beating without looking for it. Otherwise, he relished the bone penetrating warmth, gave in to it, allowing himself to relax for the first time in hours.

Sally hadn't apologized for her lack of help so far with the crimes so far. Crime scenes, in and of themselves didn't often offer clues to a forensic psychologists. If the scenes were evidenced with particular violence or any actions of the perpetrator, then, yes, this was grist on which to build a character. Neither of these scenes, however, had offered much. She was still waiting for something on which to hang what little she had.

Then, why was she bothered? Digging into her own hot dog, mustard only, she chewed the salty, fat laden concoction without much satisfaction. As she reached the halfway mark on her 'dinner' she began picking at the bun, throwing crumbs to the ever present sparrows and pigeons. Her third bite had brought a thought but it took another two before she decided to say anything.

"You know what? Both of those scenes were rather clean, don't you think?"

"More than ordinary, but not extraordinarily so." The answer carried a matter of fact tone.

"Exactly. It's like he was careful in the execution of the crime but had no particular worries about what he might have considered minor details."

"You mean like trace." Almost as if he were trying out the theory, Horatio dropped a few crumbs of his hot dog bun and with it, allowed a few strands of the pickled cabbage to fall also. The birds stood a respectful distance from the human, knowing they could outlast him. Horatio, on the other hand, looked at what he had dropped, then at the birds eyeing his 'trace' and back again. "Any ideas on what sort of personality would do that?"

Sally shrugged as she examined the darkening horizon in the east. "Someone experienced around crime commissions. That could be a smart criminal or a knowledgeable one, anyway. Nowadays, what with all of the crime programs on television, criminals are getting better informed. Not many criminals are intelligent but those that are, as you know, are the most dangerous."

"Any thoughts as to motive?"

"No defensive marks on either girl, nothing to show extreme anger in the commission. He walked up to the one, simply put a rope around her neck, choked her and then threw her into the silo from the top to make it look like another kind of death. He got the other into some sort of backbend position over the rails and toppled her over where she fell four stories, breaking her neck. No sexual assault on either."

"We have wide tread tires and, oh yes, generic work boots, size twelve."

"Indicating a large man with a vehicle which is hardly motive when sex or anger isn't involved."

A man in a large, broad brimmed straw hat pushing a cooler box on wheels walked by. "Fruta! Jugo!"

"Dessert?"

"See if he has Mexican papaya."

Rising to his full six foot height, Horatio smiled lazily. Although he didn't allow Sally to hear, he spoke nearly perfect Cuban-Spanish to the vendor.

The hawker broke into wreaths of grins. "Oh! Si!" He looked around the taller American at the woman seated on the bench. "Ella es un experto, ya veo!" Then, with a swirl of his arms, he opened his portable box and seemed to heave a few objects around. Finally he pulled out an oblong yellow and green wrinkled fruit. Closing the lid with a flourish, he reached to a wire container on one side and pulled up two paper plates, separated them and laid one down and the other to one side with not much room to spare on either side. Humming lightly he reached to his side and from a heavy scabbard, pulled out a six inch knife. In less than no time, he had split the fruit, gutted it of its black seeds and then sliced the skin from the apricot colored inner flesh. He lay the half on the plate, flat side down, trimmed off the ends and then sliced it into bite sized pieces. He finished his preparations with another reach into a plastic bag, pulling out a lime, sliced it, squeezed the juice of half of one over the waiting fruit. Finally, in an almost magical flash of his hands, he arranged the fruit in a charming tableau of a wheel with one bit sticking up in the center. Sticking a plastic fork into one wedge, he handed it to Sally.

Enjoying the look on Sally's face as much as the show itself, Horatio wound his head around slightly in amazement, uttering, "Wow! That was really something."

"Le gustaría el mismo?" The fruit man asked.

Sally nodded enthusiastically then swallowed and said, "I do like it! Get the other half for yourself, Horatio."

"Umm, you know what? I'd prefer a glass of lemonade." Realizing he had fallen into speaking English, he shifted his eyes anxiously to the smaller, mustachioed man.

The man smiled and, as if preparing an even more extraordinary order, he ran to the end of his cart, pulled a large paper cup from another wire container and threw open the second lid on the top of the box. Diving in from the waist up, he produced the sounds of ice chunking into the cup and then pulling up a large glass jug, filled with yellow liquid in which lemon slices were floating, he poured just so, allowing liquid and pulp but no lemons. As the ice cubes floated to the top, the sun glinted glamorously over the rim of the humble paper cup.

Never stingy with his money, Horatio didn't even want to know how much the man charged. He paid what he thought the show was worth and waived the man on. He was further rewarded not only with the taste of the perfect glass of lemonade but the sound of, 'umm' from Sally as she munched on her sweet treat.

"Its hard to get the Mexican papaya in stores. They usually only have the Hawaiian kind. They're not bad but not as sweet."

"How did you find this out?"

"Oh, I bummed around down in Mexico with some friends for a couple of summers during my school years."

Horatio smiled in surprise. "Sounds like fun."

"It wasn't all play. We were part of a Habitat for Humanity group down there. Each year we'd spend a month banging nails and then play tourist on a shoestring for six weeks. That's how I picked up on the fruits and vegetables." To keep herself from rambling on about herself, Sally shoved a large piece into her mouth then covered it with a napkin to catch the dribbling juice.

"There's a large warehouse that specializes in fresh fruits and vegetables from several of the Latin countries, Lo Mejor Del Sur. Ever been there?"

Sally paused in thought. "Oh, Best of the South, the big produce warehouse open to the public on weekends. Yes, its west of Little Havana, right? No, I haven't been there, but I've heard of it."

"We'll have to go sometime." Horatio thoughtfully took a sip of his drink. Yes, he'd like to spend some more of his free time with this woman. She and he had seemed to come almost personally close at times in the past few months but then, it would come to a stop. He bet that if he asked her for the reason, she'd tell him why. Well, perhaps later.

Just as Sally drew a breath, ready to encourage his thought about Lo Mejor Del Sur, Horatio's pocket rang. She sat back, knowing what it was before he answered the cell.

Returning the phone to his pocket, turning his head sideways and tilting it, he knew he didn't have to explain. Nevertheless, he felt obligated to say something. "When the current load of cases is done, let's make a date for a tour of the warehouse."

Sally had to stifle the urge to guffaw in a display of girlish nerves. How long had it been since any man had come this close to asking her out on a date much less a man she was actually interested in? She controlled her grin, slowly letting it spread as far as her cupid bow lips would allow, dimpling her cheeks. She hoped she didn't look too odd. "That sounds great."

Although Horatio had not been without female companionship since Marisol's death, he had never had to actually pursue a woman before. His liaisons had simply happened; had all been mutual flash attractions that somehow ended nearly as quickly, leaving pleasant memories but nothing more. Now, wanting to find ways to attract this woman into his sphere, appreciating the least acceptance of his invitations filled him with an amazing amount of happiness.

After a second more of eye contact and Horatio rose and strode off towards the lab. On the way, he disposed of his cup, bent over, picked up another stray bit of paper and put that in the trash as well. He wanted to turn and look back to the bench in the shade but decided that wasn't necessary; not this time anyway.

Sally wished he had turned around. Not that she needed any reassurance; it was far too early in the game for that. No, she just wanted another look at that fantastically handsome face, see that rare flash of a big smile. Instead, she luxuriated in slowly finishing her dessert.

Two hours later, Horatio stood at one of the windows in his office. The rope hadn't turned up anything other than the girl's skin cells. One bit of thread alien to Mitzi's clothing had come up and would be analyzed tomorrow. Loman's final exams had revealed nothing outside of the reason for the original cause of death.

In what lingered of the early evening light, his eyes searched the walkway below and across the circular parking area. From there his eyes wandered in the direction of the park where he had left Sally. He knew it was unlikely he would see her in the area below and he couldn't see the park because of the trees in the way and yet, he looked. His lips pursed into a small grin. It had been a while since he had looked for anyone and it felt good.

That night, in bed, the sleeping Horatio Caine quietly moaned in pleasure.

"You know, it's a good thing that Texas Chili doesn't mind sitting and cooking for several hours past 'done' time."

Calleigh smiled her most charming, loving smile. "Frank, I am so sorry. If I could have found the trace at that nightclub any faster, I would have. I could almost smell that your heavenly cooking as I worked. Of all nights, when you go to all this trouble."

"Aw, hell, Cal, I should'a known. We're on a case and until it's solved, life as we know it comes to a standstill. Maybe that's why I picked out the toughest meat I could find. It's tender as can be now. Can you eat or are you too pooped?"

Calleigh reached up to Frank Tripp's neck and pulled him down, whispering, "Oh, I can eat, but first, I'd like an appetizer, please."

Frank's tongue reached into the delicious cavity behind Calleigh's lips. He wondered how it was this woman's savor was equal to the brightness and beauty of her smile, even after a full day's work. He scooped her into his arms and pulled her into his body as much as he could, hungry for the feel of her. This was the only time he wished he was either a shorter man or she was a taller woman. It was damned difficult to bend over and hug her all over too.

As if she sensed his frustration and perhaps felt it as well, Calleigh pulled back with a dazed look. She tucked a delicate hand into his beltline and pulled, walking towards a small box standing unobtrusively by the kitchen door of her old fashioned apartment.

Allowing himself to be towed the four or five steps, Frank stood just in front of the door way as his ladylove climbed aboard the foot high carton.

"I found this the other day. Now, where were we?"

"Right here, woman." Frank leaned forward and tucked his tongue back into Calleigh's mouth. This time his efforts to pull her into his large frame were pleasingly successful.

After about five minutes of heavy petting, Calleigh called out, "Oh my lord! If I don't get some food into me, I'm going to faint."

Frank was going to make a crack about how it was a good thing she hadn't said something about getting some meat into her but refrained. There was a time for sex and all that went with it and he knew this wasn't it. For now, his manly needs were pleasantly laying in wait and could for a while yet.

As they both lay into the simple salad of romaine, red onion bits, and sliced kalamata olives with a tart vinaigrette of Frank's own making, he asked, "Find anything?"

Somehow, work could not be excluded from their personal affair.

"Inside, no. I mean, there was all sorts of trace but until it's analyzed, I don't know what I have. I doubt it's anything. After all, the hallway not only went to the club offices but to the bathrooms as well."

"Inside? So you had reason to go further?"

"There is an exit to the alley in back and it was breached but that would have been expected in all that mess. I found some skin cells on the exit handle. Maybe those will tell us something. I was going to look further but without much purpose until Tom called. He pulled the bullet from our young man, Van Meer. It was a .22 caliber with a left twist. I've seen this kind of slug before." She looked at Frank expectantly.

The seasoned detective nodded. "Chick gun. Did she make it easy on you? Toss it into the trash in the women's bathroom."

Calleigh finished off the last of her salad. "Not as nice as all that but not as bad as it could have been. I scrubbed around inside the dumpster and then got on my hands and knees outside. I think she meant to throw it in but instead it bounced off the wall behind and ended up on the ground. The muck behind the bin nearly had me losing my lunch. Floating on top was one of those custom made Winfields that only rich daddies can buy. That's what took me so long tonight. I took it to the lab and looked for fingerprints; didn't find any. I left with the computer running a check for owner." She began to sag into her chair.

"I'll fill your plate. You just sit." Frank rose and went to the stove. Taking up a medium dinner plate he raised the lid from one steaming pot and spooned out some white rice. It was so fluffy it fairly floated to the plate. Then, taking the lid from a nearly overflowing pot, he dipped in a ladle and drew out a rust brown mix of meat and beans in a heavy chili gravy and nailed the rice down with it. He reached over to a small dish and spooned out some sliced jalapeño peppers and laid them around the side of the dish. Doing this last once more, he turned and put the dish in front of the wilting blonde. "This will straighten you up."

Calleigh grinned in appreciation.

After a few bites and a heavy swig from the beer bottle to put out the fire in her mouth, Calleigh continued her recount. "Would you believe the gun actually had a pink handle?"

Frank's round green eyes flashed in disbelief. "What, no neon lights reading 'Here I am'?

Calleigh giggled almost snorting chili out her nose. "I was almost ready to just call it a day and tag for examination tomorrow."

"But, no, little Miss Perfect had to do her duty and all in one day. You just had to let the chili sit and simmer."

"What can I tell you? I bear the cross of perfection."

Looking at this most perfect woman for him who was more tired than she'd ever admit, Frank made a difficult decision. "OK, you're fed now let's go take a shower."

"The dishes."

"I'll take care of them in a bit."

It took every ounce of will and strength in Frank's frame to keep from ravishing the shining wet, soapy woman as he gently washed her skin and shampooed her hair. She tried to return the favor but after ten minutes in the relaxing hot water, she could hardly lift her arms. Pretending to help her, the large man, gave himself a quick wash in the essential areas and then turned off the water.

One thing he had insisted on when he moved a few items of his own into Calleigh's bungalow apartment was big fluffy bath sheets, not only for himself but for pampering his woman as well. Cuddling her against his bare stomach, he reached for one on the towel bar just outside the shower door and threw it around her. It hung down her back and nearly to her ankles. Pushing her back and then turning her a bit, he scooped her up into his arms and stepped through the narrow shower door.

By the time he dried her off and laid her in the bed, she was all but asleep. Putting on his shorts, he went out into the kitchen, cleaned up, and then called it a day. He crept in under the sheets, cuddled himself up to the tiny form, and hearing her sigh, fell asleep himself.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"I understand you're in charge of finding out who shot my son?"

Calleigh, unaccustomed to being stopped by a civilian in the hallways of the lab blinked, stared up at the man in front of her. Although he was almost gaunt, he had a fine mop of perfectly groomed silver hair. She stepped forward making him lower his head to view her, as she invaded his space, thus having to give in to her. "Your son? And who might that be?" she challenged in her most Steel Magnolia way. She noticed a visitor's pass was clipped to the collar flap of his Louis Vuitton shirt.

The shirt and the rest of the outfit, slacks and a vest of the same make gave him the appearance of an old fashioned doll dressed in modern children's gear which added to the generally odd look of him. His soft voice sounded garbled as if it had been long overused, perhaps for shouting. "I am Houghton Van Meer."

Calleigh took a step back out of respect for a mourning parent. "Yes, sir, I am so sorry for your loss. Yes, I'm the investigator in charge of looking into your son's death. Thank you for coming in." She led him into one of the interview rooms and offered him something to drink.

Half an hour later, seeing Horatio standing expectantly outside of the glass wall, Calleigh excused herself. In the hallway, positioning herself so she could peek around Horatio's body but not reveal facial expressions or lip movements, she noticed Mr. Van Meer seemed to slowly wilt into his clothing. She guessed that the recent death of his son was only now taking its toll.

"I don't think he knows much of what his son was up to; his social life, I mean. Sean was the product of a second marriage, a much younger woman who died in childbirth. His first wife died of breast cancer. He has three older children that we might want to talk to. He says he planned to hand his business interests over to Sean when he was done 'running around,' as he put it. I think Sean was the light of his life and, in his mind, being the baby, deserving of the most care. It sounds like he was going to give his older children a token minimum in his will. He said they were adult enough to be more than self sufficient."

"That could cause some friction."

"Making for some ill feelings, I bet."

"What did the father know about Sean's love life?"

"All I could get there was that there were always three or four girlfriends the father knew of. He could only remember one name in particular. From his tone, I think he favored her more than the others. I'll go to her first and see how far I can get."

Before he could ask, Calleigh continued, "I also asked him if he knew of Freddy's Firewater Stand." She giggled. "He actually did! He said the place was so big, he and his son could both be there and never know it until they talked about it the next morning. I wonder if both went for the same type of woman; he sure dresses as if to attract the younger set."

"One more thing, what are his business interests?"

"Well, now, that's one of the odd things. He has a lot of them, none seem related to the other and none, in and of themselves make a whole lot of money. One is a small dress shop. It's very exclusive and far too rich for me but it's not enough to make anyone wealthy. Another is a Cuban-Italian fusion restaurant. His first wife was Italian, I think. Then there is the fishing boat that supplies his restaurant. The excess catch is sold to other vendors. I think he said he started out as a landscaper and added patio construction, then barbecues and all that. He seems to make most of his money from day trading on the market."

Horatio raised his eyebrows. "In this economy?"

Calleigh shrugged her shoulders. "Well, you know, I've heard that if you know how to do it, you can make money in the market no matter how good or bad it is. Some people have the gift for it."

"Still, get our finance man, Stan, to take a look at this man's bank records. If nothing else, we can find out if anyone else had any reason to diminish the number of heirs." Horatio looked at the quickly aging father again. "You know what? Let me contact Stan. You see if Mr. Van Meer has anything else of use for us and then send him on home."

"I will. He's taking this hard."

"Maybe it's because he's having to rethink his view on life."

Ryan Wolfe walked through the lab's hallways with the look of one who had been gone a long time and was glad to be back home. Pushing a cart piled high with plaster casts; he nodded to Walter whose large frame was hunched over an infrared spectrophotometer in order to see the results he was looking for more clearly. Young Simmons returned the nod with a distracted look, meaning he was thinking more of the results he was looking at than an unlikely gesture from a co-worker. Continuing on, Ryan smiled at Valera and Boa Vista who returned the smile and then looked at each other in a 'What's up with that?' look. Ryan was usually too focused on his tasks, too serious to nod a greeting to people. Finally he reached his goal, a lab occupied by Delko. "Man! I'm glad to be back."

Delko's face spread in a slow grin. "You talk like you've been gone for a month instead a few hours."

"Yeah, well, it seemed like two months. This report of a police officer assaulting women grew from three to ten and then to fourteen over a period of a year! The easy idea of going to the location of the most recent assaults to see if there was any trace of tire tracks left turned into a nightmare! These women turned off onto every kind of back road and field you can imagine. Most of the tracks were washed out by rains, of course. A lot of what remained were on grass grown trails that left no identifiable tracks or were on trails where other vehicles had already driven since the crimes took place."

"So? You worked hard for a change. You get anything or are you just bragging?"

Wolfe gave his friend a withering look. "Hey, what do I know? I made as many castings as I could find on the most recent scenes and used up two five gig cards of photo memory. Most of the shots are just the locations of the reported assaults, where the women were first stopped and then where they say they were directed to drive. Some were assaulted right on the roads if the traffic was light enough. They all say the same thing though; it was a cop that did it." While Ryan talked, he put the castings onto the table for Delko to view.

Not wasting time, Delko separated out the tread castings he knew weren't what he wanted, leaving only three out of the ten.

His casual demeanor ended after a few minutes of examining the tread casts. "Ryan, do me a favor. Go to the evidence locker and check out files—" he read off three long numbers, "and bring them in here."

Once he'd delivered the files, Ryan left to write reports on what he'd been doing that morning.

Alone with the files and the tire treads, Delko spent twenty minutes checking photos and reports against what Wolfe had brought in before calling Horatio into the area.

"Are you sure about this?" The strain in the voice was obvious.

"Positive. All of the complaints are within the Everglades Station range of patrol and these three treads are from the same area."

Horatio's gaze shifted from place to place, trying to find a comfortable location and failing. So many women of varying ages had reported exactly the same thing, being assaulted by a police officer. Until recently, none of the reports had been made public. When any report of any sort of assault by a police officer went public, it went viral and then everyone suddenly claimed the same thing. Too often, even the first report was simply untrue. As closely guarded as these first reports had been, even without hard evidence, the unvarying details were enough to prove the stories; a cop was preying on innocent women. Now, Eric had found that one tread from one of the reported sites matched exactly with one at the Flats Farm. It was not one next to the girl's car but a match not only to the type and width, but showing wear the same wear patterns. If it was a cop, had he upped the ante? It was bad enough to have a cop stray from the straight and narrow and assault a woman but had he committed murder?

Horatio had often been accused of overdoing the 'honest cop' role. He took pride in those accusations. He looked at his position as being a part of a group made of the same cloth, all honest to the bone, sworn to serve the law to the best of their abilities. When anyone in the set was accused of dishonesty or of not performing his job, Horatio took it as a personal failure, that his honor was as tarnished as everyone in the group. "You know what? I'm going to look into this. Something isn't right."

"You want me to just back off?" Delko looked at his boss with disbelief.

Horatio turned sideways and putting his hands together at waist level, fiddled with his right forefinger. "No, I want you to look at the other trace we already have. Alright?"

"Sure, H." As much as he wanted to stick with what he knew so well, tread marks, Erik knew he had to do as he was told.

Usually, Horatio Caine was a man of action, always ready for the next piece of a puzzle, ready to head out to a location to take a look at what one of his team had found or to don a lab coat and personally analyze a bit of evidence to make it give up it's tale that would help solve a crime. At the moment, however, Caine was nearly frozen into immobility. He had slowly walked to his office and, atypically, had closed the glass door.

After standing in the middle of the floor for a while, he finally got his brain to working. 'Admit it,' he said to himself. 'You could be looking at the worst thing on earth, a killer cop.' As the words formed in his mind, his body heaved. He drew in a breath and let out a mighty sigh but nothing would make the thought take its talons out of him. He felt like a squirrel caught in the grip of a hawk. His jaw worked spasmodically back and forth as he blinked several times. The small dimple in the middle of his left cheek twinkled nervously as it did in times of great stress. 'How do I make this go away? Everything, so far, says it is what it is. I just can't let it be though.'

He shifted his stance and bent his head forwards and sideways. 'The challenge here is to disprove the evidence, if I can.' Horatio had never had to play the Devil's Advocate before. He just hoped he could perform his duties and this new challenge at the same time.

If anyone had been watching him, they would have said he stood motionless for the better part of half an hour.

Finally, moving to the window that overlooked the parking lot below, he held his cell to his ear. "Captain Herrero? I'd like to come out there tomorrow and talk with a few of your officers."

He shifted his stance at the burst of outrage. Horatio didn't have to see Herrero's face to know what emotions were running across it. He was as good as saying he was looking for a bad cop under Herrero's watch. Making an accusation of improper conduct on any cop made other cops madder than hell. Saying a cop could have committed a senseless murder on an innocent victim brought out the worst in officers.

"No, I'm not accusing anyone of anything yet. I'm still looking for pieces to the puzzle."

Again he patiently waited for the protest to end.

"Also, one of my men is coming out with me to take imprints of the tires on your available patrol cars."

"No, don't hold any of them back. Send out what you ordinarily to. We'll have to take what we can get."

Herrero's replies were getting shorter, calmer.

"One thing more, how often do the patrol cars get the tires changed, on average? I see. Where you dispose of the tires?"

"Alright, thank you."

Horatio folded his phone shut, his mind focused on what he was going to look for the next day at the Everglades police station and then at the tire dump site twenty miles north and east of it. The tires were changed about every six weeks (three hundred miles driving per shift, three shifts, seven days a week). If they were lucky, they'd find the tires still on the car. If they weren't, it was going to be only slightly worse than dumpster diving at the tire disposal sight.

Deciding not to call Eric, Horatio went down the stairs in search of him. Not that he had to explain his reasoning but he thought a change of mind would be easier to take face to face.

Eric was bent over a microscope, examining tape from a lint roller taken from the dead girl at the Everglades Park.

"Finding anything?"

"No, I just started. So far, it's just dust and pollen. Another piece has the dirt from where she made impact on her upper back. I'll get to that tomorrow."

"Walter will have to take that. We have a date to look at tires at the Everglades station tomorrow."

Eric bent back down to the eyepieces. "Good." He couldn't hide his smile.

"Yes?"

The opened door was the literal duplicate of every other one in the hallway, except for the brass numbers pinned under the peep hole. Calleigh wondered how people with bad eyesight or who were blind drunk ever found their homes. The undecorated hall showed absolutely no indication as to the expensive exclusivity of these condos inside. The exact opposite of Houghton Van Meer, stood looking slightly bothered.

"Mr. Van Meer? Miro Van Meer? I'm Lieutenant Duquesne from CSI. I realize this isn't a good time but I need to ask some questions regarding your half brother's death."

The rotund, blue eyed man made no move to admit her. "There's nothing I can help with. I hadn't seen Sean since last Christmas. We all go down to the house in the Keys for the holidays but that's it. I haven't seen him since then." He shrugged.

Settling for what she could get, Calleigh persisted. "Do you own any guns?"

His scalp was beginning to glisten through his sparse sandy hair. "Shotguns for sport only. I keep those at the club. They'll tell you I haven't checked them out in over three months. I've been overseas several times, closing an import deal from Russia."

The man sighed and deflated slightly. "Look, I know you're looking for a likely suspect and close relatives are as likely as most. No, I had no particular love for Sean but I had no particular antipathy towards him either. Yes, I was aware, as my sisters were, that Sean was going to get the family business and probably money also. Compared to what I have, however, killing him would hardly have been worth it." Raising himself up back up, he continued. "And now, I believe I have said enough. If you wish to question me any further, I'll have my lawyer contact you."

Calleigh thanked the man and allowed him to close the door on her. Although she had many interviews to go and much more information to gather, she thought she could eliminate Miro from the suspect list.

An hour later, she was experiencing a totally different brand of hospitality from another of Sean's half siblings, Tiki Wollencraft. She had been received into a lovely room where damask curtains decorated the tall windows, silk embroidered material covered the chairs, and the Louis XV tea table wasn't a reproduction.

"I bet you think one of us shot little Sean, don't you?" The remark was almost cheerful in its quality.

"I'm hoping to eliminate those possibilities."

"Well, I don't blame you for thinking that. After all, Papa made no secret of changing his will to exclude us older kids."

"There have been fewer motives for murder." Calleigh picked up the delicate saucer carrying the paper thin china cup and sipped. The Mormon tea carrying a hint of chamomile was excellent.

Ms. Wollencraft giggled girlishly and brushed back a wisp of graying hair. "I'm not so sure about Miro or Rimi; I was just fine with the idea of Sean getting Papa's estate. I mean, Miro has his export, import business; he can bargain people out of their socks, and Rimi is a corporate lawyer. Me, I married well. They may have wanted more money but they sure don't need it. I have all I can do to spend what my husband makes." Her blue eyes twinkled.

"Do you or your husband own a gun?"

"Why, yes, my husband does. Here, let me show you."

Fifteen minutes later, Calleigh drove away from the elaborate waterfront home. Her notes listed the .357 kept in the desk drawer, the other of the same caliber upstairs next to the bed and the large collection of antique blunderbusses kept in a room devoted entirely to old military gear and documents.

Rimi Zeigerhoft was so cold and driven; Calleigh couldn't help but want to put her on the top of her suspects list. Perhaps it was the resemblance to her father, the gauntness, the edged cheekbones with chunks of flesh gouged out from underneath. Added to that was a cruel fire in her dark eyes which were overshadowed by heavy, well manicured eyebrows. Maybe, as Tiki said, Rimi didn't need the money, but it was not in her nature to stand for being put aside of a lawful inheritance by her half-brother. Legally or not, this woman would have fought for what she determined was hers.

Writing her reports at the end of the day, Calleigh was hard put to not be predisposed in her opinions of any of these older siblings.

"Bad day at Black Rock?"

"Hmm?"

"Its just that you look like your pet turtle died today."

Horatio nodded at the salad in front of him. "I think it may have."

Sally cut off the urge to suggest a burial. She could tell something was seriously bothering her friend. "In what way?"

Horatio's sky-blue eyes carried hints of green and even gray, signaling the gravity of his feelings. They sought answers from Sally's pale eyes lined with those dark lashes that barely contained the vibrancy. He couldn't think how to form an answer to the subject that was so deeply personal so he turned back to examining his salad, looking for something that might want to be eaten.

Before the waiter had a chance to swoop in to check how things were going, Sally waved her off and gave her a look that she knew would keep the young lady at bay for at least ten minutes.

"Something happen at work?" She knew that was it. Work was all Horatio knew.

They were sitting under a canopy at the outside tables of one of the restaurants near the lab. A breeze wound its way from between the nearby tables, up Sally's legs and then higher to ruffle first Horatio's hair and then her own fuzzy mop.

As if the moving air had awakened him, Horatio said, "I can't say anything until we have more evidence. All I can say is, it's bad."

"Your team?"

"I can be thankful it's not that, at least."

"But you have to deal with it."

Horatio again raised his eyes but this time with a calmer, but no less hopeless look.

Sally continued, "I'd like to know what it is, but I know there are some things that have to remain confidential. I see it's really bothering you though. May I make a suggestion?"

Horatio's eyes narrowed in skepticism. As much as he liked and respected Sally, he didn't want to play her mind games.

Having dealt with the police for many years, Sally knew how to handle the worst, making Horatio an easy case. "You're not going to let this go. You can't. You have a nasty job to do and you're going to do it right. The thing is, right now, right this second, you're not working; you're feeding your face, refueling that mind and body. Also, you called me which means you knew you needed to get away from that mess if even for a few minutes."

In spite of himself, Horatio smiled wanly.

"So, my suggestion is, sit, eat, listen to my rumblings or just look at the passing crowd. Do anything that involves being in the here and now."

Horatio only half heard what his companion was saying. He'd give it a try. It was the least he could do, considering he had asked her to meet him. Suddenly, the salad looked very edible.

A few minutes later, halfway through the light repast of a plate of antipasto and another of bread, Horatio suddenly asked, "Do you know anything about tire treads?"

Taken aback, Sally blinked. "Nope, not a whit." Knowing he knew full well she didn't, she waited for the other shoe to fall.

"Well, it would be nice if you could ride along with us. Since that won't work, would you meet us at the Everglades police station about ten tomorrow morning?"

Sally checked her schedule book. "Yeah, I'm free. What's up?"

"If I can, I'm going to interview a few of the patrolmen from that division. I'd like you on hand to see if you can see anything notable in their behavior."

"You say 'if you can', meaning you don't to get much out of any of them from the git-go."

Horatio looked up from taking a bite, his blue eyes saying, 'That's exactly what I mean.'

Sally shook her head slightly and brushed a hank of hair that had fallen into her face. "I think I may have mentioned how I flunked that course in mind reading. I can divine what actions mean but just conversation? I'd be useless."

"So, the answer is no?"

"Of course I'll come, Horatio; anything to get me out of the office. I just don't think I can be of any help."

Horatio was fairly sure that Sally's sponge like mind would sop up anything she saw or heard and make use of it if at all possible.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"Horatio! Wait up a minute!"

The CSI turned impatiently at the hail from behind. He was on the way out. However, almost no one stopped him without good reason in the lab, so he put on his patient face. "Yes, Stan?"

"I have the financials on Van Meer." The disc he held over his head caught the morning light and sent its own glad tidings flashing over glass windows in the lab.

"Already? That was quick."

The little man preened under the accolade. "We aim to please. Besides, there wasn't much to investigate. His business books are in near perfect order, kept by one accountant. Van Meer's day trading practices are simple and above board. In fact, no business he has, in and of itself, makes a great deal of money, but, overall, he ranks in the third tier on the income scale in Miami."

"Did you dig?"

The balding man adjusted his heavily rimmed glasses and craned his neck up to look at Horatio. "What kind of financial forensics man do you think I am? I dug under the basement looking for something. He's honest and makes his money the hard way; he works for it."

Horatio sighed lightly. "Alright, Stan, put the report on my desk. Thank you for your diligence."

"Next time, get me a hard one."

"Yeah, several of the men here use the old Flats Farm to take a break. I did when back when I was on patrol. It's a quiet place to fill out reports, catch a nap and all that. Also more or less centrally located so when a call comes in it's easy to roll on."

"You also go out there to regularly break up illegal parties, drugs, underage drinking."

"That's right. You'd think that as often as we do it, they'd find some other place to party. But no, they keep comin' back. Mostly, though, it's quiet, a good place out of the sun. When it rained I used to back the car right into the barn."

"So, we can eliminate the types and breadths of tires that match the cars you use?"

Herrero drew his five foot, seven inch stature to its full height. "I'd say that's about right." His heavily over slung jaw pushed out even further.

"Good! Umm, look, I just want to question some of the officers who make regular stops out there. I'd like to get an idea as to what their ordinary activities are when they're at the farm."

Herrero, a veteran of twenty years, eyed Dr. Brandt. He jutted out his heavy jaw a quarter of an inch. "Aw, look, Caine, its bad enough some guy is running around from here to Florida City dressed up as a cop and hurting women. My men are all but ready to form a vigilante posse on their own and hunt down this bastard. You question them about a murder site and I'm going to have a hell of a time with morale." His words sang with the lightest hint of a Latin accent.

"If I don't do this, someone from IAB will. Would you prefer someone that?" Horatio's blue eyes pleaded for understanding of what he had to do.

Herrerro's lips disappeared under his bushy mustache as his eyes once again bounced off of Sally's form.

Sensing the man's concern, Sally said as casually as she could, "I'd prefer to stand behind a mirror or watch through a camera, if that's possible. Being interviewed about a crime scene by the brass is nerve wracking enough without a shrink staring you down."

Relief crossed Herrero's face for the first time since Sally and Horatio had closed the office door behind them. "Yeah, okay, your choice. All we have is two rooms, anyway, one with a mirror and one with a camera."

More than two hours later, Herrero said as he escorted the two out of the station, "Lady, for not knowing what to make of what they said, you sure took enough notes."

Sally smiled indulgently, always happy to talk about what she did and why. "The notes are only groundwork. If anything comes from the trace CSI has found, I use the reactions while giving answers to connect the dots. It just helps to know who frowned to the same question, who answered with no affect, and so on."

"Yeah, okay, just don't go jump to any conclusions is all I ask. These men are all good officers, take my word for it." He turned on his heel and went inside the station.

Sitting in her car, Sally gazed at Horatio's face as he bent over to talk to her through the window. "I wanted to tell him that my observations could help these men as well as hurt them. I only report what I've seen in a court of law. Could you tell him that if you get the chance?"

"We might be back, so I'll tell him then."

"I'll fill out my notes when I get to the office. I didn't see anything outstanding in anyone's reactions, though. I think we might have missed the man we want."

"Yes, we talked with less than half the station's squad. I feel the same as you do. I was hoping, however, that someone might have said something about another officer."

"What? Betray the thin blue line? Horatio, how long have you been out of uniform?"

Horatio almost smiled as he searched the ground around his feet.

"I have to run or I'll forget what I saw today. I'll see you when you get back." Sally put her car into gear.

Horatio watched Sally's silver Honda Fit pull from the curb. Looking down at her in the car, he'd caught a glimpse of the top of her bra. For a moment, just for the slightest second, his thoughts strayed to places he had not been given permission to visit. Not yet, anyway. Then, just as quickly, his mind closed in on the job at hand as he turned to find Eric.

He was not all that surprised to find the CSI lying in the back seat of the humvee. The doors were open on both sides allowing for a draught of air to pass over the recumbent form.

"Say, sleeping beauty, it must be nice to nap on the job." Horatio propped his elbow on the top of one door, smiling as he spoke.

Eric's eyes immediately flew open, showing he was alert. Without a pause, he sat up and grinned. "There were only six cars so I was done an hour ago." He waived his arm to the securely locked back. I have all of the imprints back there with all of the records of the cars comings and goings from the last tire change to the final stop here."

"Okay, good job. Now, on to the fun part, the tire dump."

As Eric stretched and yawned, he made a face of distaste. "I guess we have to try."

Horatio nodded ruefully. "Just to say we did it."

Seven hours later, driving back to the lab in the last remnants of the day's light, the two men were more than just a little tired. They had worn protective garb, covering themselves from head to foot, but their faces still carried traces of the black tire dust even though they had both washed several times.

Eric rubbed his chin and grimaced. "I think I picked up more dirt in that godawful bathroom than I did in the yard."

Each smiled at the other but let go of the rest of the comments that could have been made. How other people lived or worked was not their business.

Forty-five minutest later, they were unloading the long lengths of rubber imprints on a cart. Just as they were about done, Calleigh and Ryan came out of the elevator.

"Oh Lord! Are you two just getting back?" Calleigh's blue-green eyes popped open in surprise.

"You thought you had it bad running all over the Everglades yesterday, photographing and making tread imprints? Try climbing over a million tires looking for four." Eric aimed his remarks at Wolfe.

"And you brought a large part of it back with you on your face."

Before Eric could make a comeback Calleigh broke in. "I bet you have to do paperwork on those before you go home." She indicated the gray-black mass on the cart. Why don't I come up with you and help while I tell you about what I have on Van Meer?"

Not to be outdone, Ryan said, "Let's make it a party. I don't have much on the assaults or on the dead girls but I'll tell what I've got. I'll even buy a new pot of coffee."

Once Eric explained what his cryptic notes on each tread meant in relation to the paperwork on the patrol cars he'd brought, it was a simple matter of writing out the information on the evidence forms. Four treads per car, twenty four treads in all.

When Ryan was about to 'allow' Calleigh to go first with her information, she chirped, "Usually it's age before beauty, but in my case, it's age and beauty before you so you'd have to wait anyway."

Eric seemed to enjoy that one the most. "Wolfe, when she's right, she is so right."

Calleigh knew there were no hard feelings. Indeed, knowing Ryan as she did, she was counting on some sort of retaliation later.

She concluded her recount of the interviews with the family members with, "I'm not so sure of Remi. I don't think she would have done the job herself but I'm not sure she wouldn't have thought twice about hiring someone."

"Any priors?" whispered Horatio as he carefully added another label of an evidence number to a tread.

"Nothing since she was in college. She had a few drunk and disorderlies in her junior and senior years but that's all.

"Tomorrow I'll start with that one girlfriend Mr. Van Meer could remember. I'll just hope to get more from there."

Horatio nodded silently, bent over the table, writing.

Ryan finished his notes in his precise printing before taking a breath to start. "All of the trace on the bodies leads around in circles. It's all local material found in the area that you'd pick up just standing or walking."

Finishing his notes, Horatio stood up. "Then, you know what that means, don't you?"

"Go back over the clothing again, go back over the trace again." Wolfe's voice carried resignation.

The work was finished five minutes later and the entire group happily escorted it to the evidence locker and watched the night clerk check it in, put it all in a large tub, seal it with red tape and on a bottom shelf.

When he reached home, Horatio gave his cell one last check before giving in to the tiredness that was about to overwhelm his body. Instead of sighing in resignation, he smiled as he hit the call back button.

"You called?"

"I was just curious how the tire dump search came out."

"Fruitless." Horatio stifled a moan as he tried to rearrange his long frame more comfortably on the couch.

"You sound tired, m'friend."

"Six hours of climbing over tires reminded me of police rookie training camp."

"No big surprise that I didn't come up with anything on the interviews this morning. Either he wasn't in the group or he's one of the veterans, well practiced in artifice."

"Or we're not looking for a cop."

After a moment of silence, Horatio called out, "Sally?"

"I'm still here; just trying to think up a way to properly answer that last remark without flat out disagreeing with you."

"You think it is a cop?"

"Too many women say so with stories too close to not be so. There's no way of collusion among them all."

"We still don't know that the one assaulting the women is a cop and not just a very well tricked out car and a convincing uniform."

"Not having any evidence to look at, I can't say. I'm just not so sure so many women are so wrong." Sally tried not to sound like the great protector of all wronged females.

"Then, perhaps there are two different assailants, one is a cop out for kicks on innocent women and the other is a murderer of a whole other variety."

"Gawd! I hope so! I'd hate to think of a cop gone that far rogue as to kill young girls."

This time, after a long pause, it was Sally's turn to call out. "Horatio?"

She was greeted by a grunt.

"I think I'd better continue this conversation with you tomorrow, Sally."

"I'm glad you returned my call. Thanks."

"You're more than welcome. Good night."

"G'night."

Horatio checked his phone for messages one more time. Rising, he wasn't sure which of his bodily needs was more urgent, the hunger that made even his legs feel hollow or the prostrating exhaustion that spread from the center of his core out to his extremities. Neither could be met, he knew, until he showered. Finally his brain kicked in and he made a pass through his kitchen, opened a can of vegetable beef soup, and dumped it into a dish, laid a sheet of wax paper over the bowl, put it into the microwave, and set the machine to half power for five minutes.

Turning on the hot water in the shower, he shed his clothes and allowed himself the luxury of leaving everything in a pile on the floor of the bedroom. He knew they were all covered in tire dust, to say nothing of his sweat so all needed cleaning.

Damn, but the hot water felt good on his body! Although his hair had been protected by a hood in the tire dump, he felt the need to wash it twice, each time including his face. 'About time to get the locks cut', he thought. Maybe he'd stop in at De La Marca's place this time. He liked to go to various shops in the different barrios, get caught up on the gossip of the area, schmooze with locals, make sure any pertinent information that he needed would come his way.

As he finished his washing with his favorite area, his private parts, stroking his growing penis with a soapy hand, his mind once again went into unbidden territory. Usually, his thoughts at this time were of fantasy women or at least women he had had relationships with in the past. Now, he was thinking of Sally and how she might look naked. He knew her general form from that elfish costume she sometimes wore when working with the mentally challenged kids, so the rest was filling in the colors and other minor delicious details. He stopped himself before his imagination took him too far.

Quickly polishing off the soup and a few crackers, the call of a night's sleep was too hard to resist. Practically stumbling o bed, he was asleep before he'd pulled the sea-foam green silk sheets up to his chest. Whether by design or accident, his dreams could not be controlled.

The next morning he knew, from the dim memory of the erotic dreams he'd had, his imagination had taken him too far. For the moment, however, at least he felt satisfied for the first time in several months.

Two hours later, when he parked his red 1958 MG A 1500 in the lot under the lab, his thoughts were still tangled up in the vivid unrealities of his dream; so much so, he blushed when he saw the real thing getting out of her car and coming toward him.

"Good morning, Sally." He couldn't meet her bright eyed gaze.

"G'mornin' Sunshine. You get enough sleep?"

When he paused ever so slightly before saying that he had, she also noted his lack of eye contact. Copying a gesture she had seen him use time and again, she cocked her head to one side and peered into his brick red face.

"What's up?"

"Umm," he tried to think of the right answer, "nothing. I guess I need another cup of coffee."

"Oh ho! Driving while not under the influence! Tsk and shame. Come on, then, into the elevator and off we go!" Sally put her hand firmly onto the small of Horatio's back and pushed. Even with the layers of the suit coat and a shirt, she could feel the firm muscles of a healthy body. She'd done this not only to cop a feel but to check his body temperature as well. As she'd thought, the rest of his body heat was normal so whatever was going on in his face was either emotional or a body chemistry that probably wasn't life threatening. She was betting it was emotional and had something to do with her. She would be willing to give up her doctorate to know more.

Too soon, the elevator hit the first floor, her stop. "Enjoy your coffee." She felt really dumb saying that but standing so close to him, smelling that shower fresh odor, noticing how even the bland elevator light brought out the gold highlights in his sunset hair, it was hard to think!

No sooner had the elevator doors closed than Horatio rolled his eyes in relief, his thoughts whirling. He didn't know if he just wanted to just screw her, ask her out and see if there was a relationship, or marry her and start a family. Usually, with women, he was in charge and they were happy. Yes, a few had wrapped him around their fingers and then had dropped him. He hoped he had never made a woman feel like that. In this case, though, he didn't think he'd ever be in charge and something about her told him Sally didn't care to be the one who told him what to do. Maybe that was the puzzle; not that he didn't know what he wanted to do with her, but that he didn't even know the possibilities of what could happen between them. She was a fascinating woman on so many levels.

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

"Yeah, so I dated him; so what? I wasn't the only one, you know."

The bright Miami sunlight bounced highlights from the perfectly glossed, and at the moment, very pouty lips.

Calleigh's hair glowed warmly. "Yes, I do know. It was another girlfriend of his that gave me your name."

The twenty-three year old Katie Goldenheim tossed her perfect platinum straight cut hair. "Who? Tracee Laughlin? Like I could care. We're BFFs anyway."

"As a matter of fact no, but thank you for giving me the name of another person to talk to. Is that the Laughlin Sugarcane family?" Calleigh Duquesne was having a hard time keeping her cool with this supercilious twit.

"Her and at least five others I could name." Katie's oversized sunglasses perched on her too perfect nose gave her face a mannequin-like blank look.

Calleigh's lips spread her best 'Tell me, girl friend,' smile. "He had that many girlfriends? Wow! He was a popular guy." She could not have been more surprised when Katie removed her glasses and began to daub real tears from her eyes.

"Sean was about as wonderful a guy as I've ever known; kind, sweet, generous with what he had and," she practically sobbed, "he was a machine in the sack!"

Taken aback but not deterred, Calleigh shook her head to swing her own blond tresses over her shoulder. "Did the other girls feel that way?"

The original little rich girl-twit, tearless and bored with life, reappeared. She smiled wanly. "What would you think about a guy like that? I mean, he had looks, charm, a great body and, well, I'll leave the rest for you to imagine."

"Weren't any of you jealous of the others?"

"I hardly think so! I mean, he was all that and a bag of chips, you know, but he wasn't the only one and he didn't have nearly the money most of the other guys we all know do." The girl's face began to scan the courtyard where Calleigh had stopped her before she'd had a chance to go from her too cute little sports car into her mcmansion.

Reading that as a sign of oncoming boredom, Calleigh dove in for the treasure she sought. "Weren't the other girls jealous of your relationship with Sean?"

"I wasn't jealous of them and he did the same things with them as he did with me, I'm sure. Share and share alike. We're just passing time until our parents think we're grown up enough to get some money or until we get married into more money."

Calleigh was used to the attitude in this town. "Besides Tracee, who else did Sean like to see?"

As if the effort was quickly draining her of energy, Katie listlessly gave Calleigh three more names. At the same time, she headed for the front door and had hardly uttered the last syllable of the third name before closing it with a thump before Calleigh had a chance to ask if Katie owned a gun.

Unperturbed, Calleigh blinked at the door a couple of times and once again smiled before turning on her heel. The gun question could be asked later if it need be. As for the names she'd gotten, if there were any more names than that, she would bet anything more than one of the other three was going to give them up. These sweet little dears had nothing to do with their time but keep track of who was doing what and then spend the rest of the time texting about it.

Calleigh was more comfortable carrying on interviews in the police department. Here, the environment was controlled with fewer distractions and, considering who she was interviewing, the fewer distractions the better. Not that every young woman she called in was ADHD or a bare qualifier for complete idiot, but of the six, she could say that four were in the running for one or the other or both.

Tracee's brilliant green eyes betrayed the presence of colored contact lenses. Besides the obligatory breast enhancement and nose job, Calleigh caught sight of the small scars denoting fat suction on her well formed thighs that her pretense of a dress didn't cover. After the required show of sadness, the three tears mopped by the proffered tissue, the dropped head, Tracee seemed to recover quickly enough. "I wouldn't say I dated Sean. I mean, he was fun to hang out with and I went to his house but only if there were others around; usually Morgan and Brittany. We always hang out together. It was more like Sean hung out with us rather than the other way around. The only difference was it he did it with us at his place, mostly."

"Do you own a gun?"

"God no! Well, it's not like I have to. After all, Daddy has a whole room full."

"Little ones or big ones?" Calleigh was trying to keep the questions as simple as possible.

"I think the smallest one he has is a .357. He taught me to shoot with that one."

Somehow, discussing guns, the girl didn't sound quite so vapid. Calleigh took note.

"You don't even have a small one, like for self protection?"

Tracee rolled her too green eyes under her carefully plucked brows. "With Daddy's goons around all the time, I hardly need one."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, Daddy pays a boatload of money to a security company for twenty-four hour protection for me, my brothers, and my mom. I mean, gosh, now, if you have two dimes to rub together, people kidnap you."

"What were your friends' names again?"

Morgan Daggey could have been a clone of Tracee in appearance. She was a different person otherwise.

"Oh Darn! Why did Sean have to go and get dead? He was so much fun to be with. He was the only one who could get my mojo going so good too."

"Would you say you were close?"

A blank stare met Calleigh's intelligent gaze.

Calleigh rephrased. "I mean, would you consider yourself his girlfriend?"

A mocking look came up. "No more than Tracee or Katie or my other BFFs, Tracey or Dawn."

After Calleigh had determined that Morgan was actually talking about two different girls, Tracee and Tracey, she asked Morgan if she owned a gun.

"Oh! Papa wouldn't let me have one even if I liked them and I don't. He hires men to follow me around. Gosh! I was supposed to spend tomorrow afternoon over at Sean's place. What am I going to do now?" She reached into her purse and pulled out a cell phone.

Before the girl could start touching her screen to speed dial, Calleigh quickly reached over and relieved her of it. "Not just now, please. First, I'll take Dawn's and Brittany's phone numbers from the phone here and then get their addresses from you. Then I'd like the names of any of other of Sean's acquaintances, if you know any."

Tracey Capella came in with an attorney, a short man with curly hair where he wasn't bald and a pronounced chin. "I don't have to say anything if I don't want to." She announced this before either of them had a seat.

"No, you don't and I wouldn't want you to."

Somewhat taken aback, Tracey's attitude almost softened until her attorney whispered in her ear. Then she straightened her back and set her jaw. She sat primly beside the attorney who put on a stone face.

Knowing the girls' grapevine had already spread the news of Sean's death; Calleigh immediately asked the two questions that were becoming standard in this set of interviews. Aside from the names already mentioned, Tracey was not forthcoming. "No, I don't think I've seen anyone else around but then, I sometimes do the books for Dad's business so I'm not always around like the others are."

"Do you own a gun?"

The attorney quickly leaned over.

"No."

"Let's put it this way. Did you ever have possession of a gun?"

Another consultation, this time more lengthy.

"No."

This time the attorney spoke. "Do you have anything to charge my client with?"

Calleigh rose. "No. We are simply interviewing Sean's friends, hoping to get leads to his killer as quickly as possible."

"How do you know he wasn't killed by a stray bullet in the general gunfire at the club?"

"We know because we did our homework. We intend to continue to do our work with all due diligence until the person who purposefully fired the shot into Sean's head is caught and put in jail."

The mustached man's eyes glittered for a brief second as he tried to think up a response. "Tracey, let's go."

Brittany reminded Calleigh of a cuttlefish. Some might have said chameleon but she was much more changeable and extremely intelligent besides.

"I was about to give up on Sean anyway. He wasn't going to be anything more than a small time business man, scrabbling to keep it all together."

"But wasn't he fun?"

How intelligent eyes could be completely blank, Calleigh couldn't say.

Brittany hardly moved and yet there was a tremendous change in her body. She had hardly made a move and yet a completely different person was sitting in the chair. Even the color of her eyes seemed to change. "Oh, yes and in more ways than one."

"You mean, in the bedroom?"

"It's a shame success in life for a man isn't about being the best lover."

"Did he seem to like you as a lover?" Calleigh knew questions like this could make or completely blow an interview like this.

The cold eyes rolled and the perfect skin seemed to change tint. "I know he did. I mean, I have to be great in all categories to be a success in this world."

"Excuse me?"

Another person appeared, sitting straighter, in tight control. The tone of voice took on one of a teacher with a dull student. "Women in my income bracket not only have to be smart for their husband's business but they have to be good to look at and great in the sack if they don't want to be traded in for newer models later on down the line. I'll never lose two of those advantages and the third, well, with a man with enough money, I can always buy enough exercise, diet and plastic surgery to be a treasure forever." She smiled smugly.

After a full two seconds, Calleigh asked, "Do you own a gun?"

"I think our bodyguards play card games while we all get together. They made up a small army! I sometimes wondered if Sean had us over just for the protection it afforded his house."

"So, is that a no about the gun?"

"That was a no."

Dawn was a brown little kitten, all wide eyed, fluffy and innocent. Her attention was caught by every person passing by the glass walled room. If it was a man, she smiled, even if the man didn't notice her.

In reply to her relationship with Sean she stretched, very unkittenlike, "He was fun to play with."

"Play?"

Her voice drawled like a ten year old. "You know, like, in bed. He had the loveliest toy."

"Toy?"

"Well, like, I would never have thought to call it that until I heard Pamela say it. She said Morgan had, like, laughed her head off when she'd told her."

"So, you all knew about each other going to bed with Sean?"

The brown eyes popped open. "Sure. I, like, know about most of the other girls the men I date go to bed with. I'm, like, sure Sean knew about Keith and well, everyone knows about Todo." She giggled at this last.

"And no one is, like, jealous?" It took everything Calleigh had to throw in the word, 'like', but she felt it was necessary.

Dawn shrugged and put up her hands. "What's to be jealous of? Nothing can get, like, serious until we come into our money. We've done college, done Europe or wherever and now, we, like, just get to live until we have to be on our own and life turns into a drag." She cocked her head to one side.

"I don't suppose you own a gun."

"I got a call before I came here saying you had asked Tracee and Morgan that question. Did you ask the others too? Well, the answer is no. Honest, we just don't need them when we have bodyguards. Like, you know?"

"Did I hear you mention a Pamela?"

Pamela was elegant in the same way Audrey Hepburn had been. She was tall and slender and seemed to walk with the delicacy of a deer going through a meadow. She was also somewhat pouty.

"I was beginning to feel left out of today's fun. Morgan couldn't remember what she'd told you and Tracey said she'd given out as little information about Sean's friends as possible. Just like them. Well, ask away. Pops said to go in, be honest, and help if I could."

Refreshed by such candor, Calleigh decided to be equally forthright with her questions. "First, can you give me a list of Sean's friends?"

No new names came up in the list, nor did she own a gun.

Sitting as unmatched bookends on the couch in the break room, Calleigh and Frank each leaned against the arms and had one knee up on the couch, one elbow propped against the back. They were comparing notes on the day's interviews. Each held a cup of coffee, held their notes on the folded knee on the couch.

"None has any reason to carry guns."

Frank grunted. "So they say. I think they'd carry one of those little popguns just because it's cool."

"What bothers me is that none of them had a motive."

"Yeah, that bothers me too. I'm not so sure about share and share alike, body fluids and all." Frank's thin lips nearly disappeared in his disgust at the thought.

"The only one that really bothers me is Brittany."

"But she said Sean would never get anywhere financially."

"Maybe she likes a challenge. After all, her father owns an airport that acts as the central hub for most of the import and export of fresh fruits and vegetables to and from South America. As an only child, she hardly has any worries about money."

"Then why shoot him?"

"There might be more to the story. I mean, if he was of no use to her except for fun, why bother?"

"Yeah, she didn't strike me as one who likes to play with her food before she ate him either."

Calleigh gave Frank's hand a playful slap. Then she sighed and stretched. "I'll call her in for another interview tomorrow."

"What about the men that one girl mentioned?"

"Can you imagine a guy using a small gun with a pink handle to blow away a rival?"

"Guess not. If I had a rival I'd use something big and mean with big mean hollow point bullets.

In spite of his straightforward stare, Frank's voice carried an almost shy note. "What say I pick up some cheap takeout meet you at my place?"

Although she and Frank had been involved for over a year, Calleigh loved that he never took their relationship for granted. She gave him her brightest smile and said she'd meet him in an hour or so. Though she was hungry, Calleigh knew there would be much more to the evening than food. If any of the other team members had walked in at that moment and seen that smile, they would have had no doubt as to what it meant.

Three hours later, Calleigh removed the pillow from her face. Her eyes flipped open as her mouth snapped shut.

Frank looked up over Calleigh's smooth stomach from between her legs. "I'm going to have to get some heavier pillows, woman. I think the neighbors still heard that one."

"Oh, my lord! That was wonderful, Frank. I can't move!" It had taken every bit of her remaining strength to pull the pillow away and now Calleigh lay with her arms stretched out from her body, fully relaxed.

Frank pushed his bulk up onto his hands and knees. "Good. Now I can take full advantage of you."

Calleigh giggled. "Oh, yes, sir, please do."

Frank grabbed the pillow Calleigh had used to muffle her screams of climax, slid one hand under her well formed rump and shoved the pillow under. "Comfy?"

Calleigh giggled inanely again. "As relaxed as I am right now, I'd be comfy hanging from the chandelier."

"Maybe next time." Frank took hold of his growing penis and rubbed the head against the organ his tongue had only recently left. He was gratified to hear a growling moan. They had been playing on the bed, rolling and kissing and caressing for over an hour. They'd both been ready for sexual release for over half an hour but it had been fun to extend the time. His foray between her legs had not been planned but it had sure been fun. Now, it was his turn. He lowered the growing head slightly lower to the small cavity below and pushed. At the same time, he lowered his body down so that he hovered over the love of his life. Kissing her gently at first, he moved his hips, feeling hers rise.

Frank could no more tell exactly what happened next than he could describe the steps of the big bang that created the infant universe but just as surely as what he did to start his consummation with Calleigh, so it ended with the same burst of light filled energy. The only difference was, theirs was somewhat more moist, in more areas than one. Frank, was, after all, a sweater.

Calleigh thanked the powers that be that he was also polite in that, just before he passed out from the expenditure of energy, Frank flopped over onto the bed beside her. Feeling loved and cared for, Calleigh twisted so that her back snuggled into Frank's midsection. Grabbing his arm and wrapping it around her, she fell into a light sleep.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Frank kept as much distance as he could from Sally as they watched the interview from behind the slanted one-way mirror. He didn't like police psychs. Actually, he didn't like any of them, police or civilian, for that matter. One of his ex-wives had made him go to counseling with her. It had been a fiasco no matter how the prissy little man had tried to make him open up. He had even asked him to come in alone to pry his head open and he'd walked out ten minutes after walking in. He just couldn't do it.

Sure, Sally was a forensic psych but she also acted as the department psych and that just made him itch. Lord help him if he ever had to use his weapon and be forced to go talk to her. As it was, there was no reason for her to talk to him and he sure wasn't going to start a conversation on his own.

In the interview room, focused on the young woman in front of her, Calleigh felt like she was in a small cage with a large predator. Brittany had held in her claws the day before, but now, called in for a second time, she was wary and making no bones about it. Even though a cuttlefish is a benign animal, even gentle and shy, the alien form and ability to wrap itself around a victim makes it unsettling to humans. Calleigh was again making the same comparison. She took in the long strawberry roan tresses hanging perfectly over her shoulders, the gray-blue eyes that could change hue in a flash, the high cheek bones, and almost too wide mouth that the nose job simply couldn't hide. Although she wasn't a big girl, she gave the impression of being large to the point of being overpowering.

"I have just a few more questions to ask you."

"Why me and not the others?"

Ignoring the question, Calleigh went on. "If Sean wasn't all that important in your life, why spend time with him at all?"

Again that lightening quick change of mode and color. The trust fund baby girl seemed to put on a party hat with a handful of confetti. "For practice. I mean, if winning or losing doesn't mean anything, then it's easier to learn what works on a man."

"Do you think the other girls were using him for the same thing?"

A subtle change to neutral. A shrug of the shoulders and a flick of those dead cold eyes to one side before nailing the blond in front of her. " Maybe Tracee and Morgan were. Dawn is just too silly to use anyone. We worry about her even though her Papa is giving her a bundle next year."

"Worry?"

"Well, it's best if we marry our equals, at least, you know."

"Or if you marry better."

The predator showed up. "Better is better."

"How about the other girls?"

An inky wall came up. "I really wouldn't know."

"And if you did, you couldn't say."

Calleigh was glad for the three foot breadth of glass table between her and Brittany. The woman was losing patience and would just as soon end the interview as quickly as possible. If she was within reach, Calleigh felt as if the cuttlefish would wrap her in unloving arms and crunch her with its beaklike mouth. "Excuse me a moment."

She walked out and past the small hallway where Sally and Frank were standing. They followed until they knew they could not be heard. "What do you think? I'm out of questions."

Frank put in his two cents quickly knowing he'd be outtalked in less than no time. "I'm seeing pretty much the same thing I saw yesterday; a spoiled brat who doesn't give a damn about anyone but herself."

Sally rubbed her jaw. "She'd make a great stage actress. Although not a clinical case, she's got more personalities than a summer novel. I agree with Frank in that she's got 'way too much time on her hands. I don't think she cares a whit about the other girls though. When she finds the man she wants, she isn't going to let another woman close until she's got him bagged, tagged and brought him home. Then she'll run defense for the rest of his life. For her, murder would be too easy. Even if Sean did say something to offend her, I don't think she'd let him off so easy as to shoot him."

"So, let her go?"

Both shrugged their shoulders and nodded.

Usually, Horatio found that men larger than himself took their size very seriously; typically, to get what they wanted. Frank Tripp, for one, was not averse to using his size, hovering and growling over some people to convince them to see his point of view. Walter, on the other hand, had an attitude that could have matched that of a man barely topping five foot two. He was polite to the point of being sweet and was youthful without being immature.

"Horatio, I may have found something important."

Horatio had taken up his usual station in the center of the lab. "What is it, Walter?"

"It was that bit of trace from the Toler girl's clothing found at Flats Farm. You might want to see it."

A moment later, lifting his head from the eyepiece of the Infrared Spectrophotometer, Horatio asked, "Explain, please."

"Okay, it's a bit of gold thread. It's pretty much the kind found on a lot of insignias. In this case, it's from Miami-Dade Police insignias that are sewn on the sleeves of the uniforms."

Horatio's adam's apple bobbed quickly as he swallowed hard. "Are you sure?"

"The company that makes them buys up entire lots of thread. Not only am I sure it's from an officer uniform, it's identifiable to the point of time it was put on to the uniform."

"How so?"

"You know threads from various companies vary as well as batch to batch. The composition of the thread varies because formulas change, sources of coloration change and so on."

"Yes." The quiet voice was more softly whispering.

Unaware of the affect the news was having on his boss, Walter went blithely on. "As you looked at the thread, the spectrophotometer showed a particular play of light refraction, didn't it? Well, that kind of thread was used on a very limited edition of badges ten years ago. It made the gold look particularly iridescent, more gold so to speak. Other threads made at various times don't show that kind of light play."

Horatio spread his legs and looked for a place to hide his running thoughts. His blue eyes under his upward slanted brows flicked from dark corners to under tables to the arches of Walter's size 16 shoes. There were still other possibilities to explain away the evidence, away from a police officer, weren't there?

"What year were the insignias handed out?"

"1996. I have the information ready to go.

"H?"

More and more, the evidence was building in a direction in which he wondered if he could honestly follow. He so wanted time to think this out. "Yes, Walter?"

"What do you want me to do with the findings?"

Briefly closing his eyes and opening them to the only answer there was, he said, "Write up the report."

"Can we find the guy based on this?" Walter, being the new guy, was always interested in raising his credits for arrests and convictions.

"I don't know. It's certainly the most evidence we've had since we found Ms. Toler."

Before the extraordinarily tall CSI could ask any more questions, Horatio had left the trace room.

Walter's face fell into thought before he shrugged his massive shoulders. "I'll write the report and put it on you desk."

"Horatio?" The southern twang wound sweetly around his name.

Calleigh had stuck her head through his closed office door. Not many people took that liberty without knocking first.

"Yes, Calleigh." Horatio kept his back to the blond invader. She could read him too well and, at the moment, he wasn't ready to even say what was bothering him much less discuss it.

"I've called another of Sean Van Meer's girlfriends in for a second interview. She'll be here shortly. Did you want to observe?"

"Alright. Call me when she comes in."

He could sense her looking at his back, almost hear the nearly asked inquiry. Only the click of the door told him she was gone.

Not moving, hoping Calleigh had gone down the short flight of steps from his loft office space Horatio sighed deeply. Perhaps following another of the cases on hand would allow his mind to clear. He'd been almost sure for the last day that an officer or perhaps a former officer was on the rampage. There were too many clues to be coincidence. There was no doubt now that the molester was a cop. That was why Herrero had been so defensive. No policeman liked to think another cop was out of line. Sure, some fell back a few steps and many weren't Mr. Nice-Hero-Guy as the public would like to think. Some were cynical, hardnosed and could even be cruel, walking a thin line between the people they guarded the public against and joining them. At least most did their duty most of the time and very few actually hurt innocent people.

Dropping his head, Horatio's blue eyes had taken on a tinge of gray sadness as he examined the cuticle on his forefinger. 'Face it, Lieutenant Caine; you're the one that's bothered about this. You want this vermin, want to go out and hunt him down, and dispose of him.'

Having acknowledged this fact, he felt bolstered. 'And you shall, if the evidence points to it and only legally.'

He paused and hoped he could keep that resolve. There had, after all, been a couple of times…

"Calleigh?" The whispery voice called through a door into the gun lab.

"I know, Horatio, it's been over an hour since I talked to you. I called the girl, Linda, again and got no answer this time. I guess I'll have to go out to her home again."

"Let's see if we can get a GPS trace on her phone. It might tell us where she is."

Calleigh hung up her lab jacket and accompanied Horatio to the computer lab.

"Hey, Sam! What'cha doin'?"

Samantha, computer guru of the lab, was about to come back with a smart remark but stopped as she turned. "I'm— Hey Calleigh, Horatio, what can I do for you?"

Two minutes later, a GPS fix had determined that Linda's phone, at least, was still at her home address. Since it wasn't in use, there was no way to know if the girl was in proximity to the device.

"Well, I guess I can only hope she's one of those who is surgically connected to her phone and just isn't answering it. Maybe she's taking a long shower."

"I think I'll come with you."

Calleigh had thought of Frank as an escort but, would settle for the other hero in her life. Not only did she regard Horatio as the best police officer she'd ever met, he had saved her life more than once. "Good, sharing rides saves gas."

Half an hour later, after an unusually quiet ride, the two parked the humvee facing the doublewide mobile home. It was located in an older mobile home park where the homes were wide set apart, each with fences and yards. Horatio took note of the simple gate that led to a yard that was neat without showing a professional touch. Without having to think about it, Horatio stood back and to one side as Calleigh mounted the three steps up to the small porch and rang the door bell.

The call, "Who is it?" came from inside.

"Ms McGrue, its Lieutenant Duquesne. I thought you were supposed to be coming to the station to talk with me."

"I decided I didn't want to talk."

"Please open the door."

"Go away!" The voice was desperately pleading.

"I can't force you to open the door and talk with us but if you don't then I'll call for a warrant and have the right to arrest you."

The door opened a crack to reveal a young woman who looked disheveled and tired. She wore a thin housedress that had either had a rough couple of days or perhaps hadn't been washed in a month. "Can't you see, I'm in mourning for Sean? Please, just leave me alone."

"I wish I could but we need to find out who killed him. His death was no accident."

Horatio took a step back and to the side and took a look around. He spread his legs with his hands on his hips, in a position of unthreatening readiness. He saw a couple of faces in the homes across the street. More, he listened to the tone of Ms. McGrue's voice. He heard stress and sadness. He did not hear that sharp tone of a lie.

She didn't seem to notice Horatio and spoke only at Calleigh. "What has that got to do with me? Leave me alone!" The dark haired girl pulled the door closed with a bang.

Calleigh knocked this time, calling out. "I'll be calling for a warrant, Ms. McGrue."

A loud report from inside had Calleigh diving for the ground. Instinctively she looked for Horatio. Instead of looking like an officer in a protective duck, he lay on his back, his gun hand to his side, the other straight out from his body.

"Horatio!"

Scrambling crablike to the prone man, she was afraid of the worst.

Another shot rang out. A second hole appeared in the door.

Before she could even reach him, Calleigh saw Horatio stir and raise his hand to his head. He remained down but lifted himself slightly revealing an ugly, bloody crease at the side of his head. "Horatio, it'll be alright."

He lay as he was and called out, "Calleigh, I'm okay. Call for backup. One more shot and then we return fire but not until then."

Pulling out her cell, Calleigh punched the number and said, "Shots fired. Officer down!" She gave the address and hung up.

As soon as she was done, Horatio pushed himself up. "Let's get out of the open." He rose to a doubled over position and both he and Calleigh ran for each side of the car. Calleigh stood behind the open door of the driver's side and he took the passenger side door.

"Linda McGrue," Calleigh shouted, "come out with your hands up."

They both stood tense, their weapons in both hands, aiming for the trailer's door. Every second a person who had committed a violence delayed giving herself up, the more escalated the event was likely to get.

Calleigh looked back to Horatio. She was not reassured to see the blood dripping from his chin onto his shirt collar and down the front of his shirt. His extended hands, holding his pistol, were trembling slightly which, considering the circumstances, was predictable, seasoned officer or no.

Three minutes later, the only relief was the sound of sirens approaching. There had been no response from the home. Two minutes after that, three patrol units and one civilian car arrived and within another three minutes, five more were parked up and down the small lane between the rows of mobile homes.

Frank Tripp was in the civilian arrival and beside Calleigh within seconds. "Who's the officer down?"

"It was me, Frank." Horatio's voice called from across the car.

Bending down to look, Frank did a double take at Horatio's face. Without hesitation, he ran around the back of the car and to Horatio's side. "Ambulance will be here in a jif. Why don't you go to the back?"

Horatio shook his head slowly and seemed about to say something before he sagged towards Frank, unconscious.

"Hey! A little help here! Get him to the back."

"Horatio!" Calleigh called out again.

Frank ran around to the front of the car again. "I think he's okay, Cal. What's going on?"

After explaining, Calleigh turned to the problem of the moment. "Okay, she hasn't fired in the last ten minutes so let's hope she's just too scared to come out. Let me ask her to come out again."

Calleigh used her loudest outside voice. "Linda, come out now, unarmed. Open the door, show yourself with your hands on top of your head. Let's talk about this."

After five minutes of silence, Calleigh repeated herself.

Turning to Frank after another five minutes of no action she said, "I guess we'll have to go get her." She went to the back of the humvee.

While she dragged out her bulletproof vest she gave her orders. "You take two officers to make a distraction in the back. Get me a crowbar. Those older trailer doors are easy to crack. I'll take three men in through the front."

Frank set his jaw, not for fear of Calleigh's safety, but showing he was ready to carry out his end of the operation. "What kind of gun do you think she has?"

"I don't know. I just hope she isn't carrying it around right now, whatever it is."

Their hands involuntarily rose and touched before they parted.

Ten minutes later, the three officers and Calleigh, crouched behind the humvee, heard a series of crashes and bangs indicating the distraction Frank had been assigned. Running as fast as they could, first, the man with the crowbar ran up the steps and jammed one end in under the lip of the door where the handle was. He pulled, shoved the edge in deeper under the bent out frame and with powerful wrench, pulled the door open. He stood back while Calleigh and the two officers ran in shouting, "Get down! Now! Get down on the floor! Now!"

It was Calleigh who found the young woman crouched, weeping, in the shower in the small bathroom off the hall. Assuring herself that she carried no weapon, she ordered her to stand up and turn around to be cuffed.

"Linda McGrue, I am arresting you for firing a weapon at police officers, for injuring an officer and for just about anything else I can find."

"Injuring? What? No! I didn't mean to. I just fired through the door so you would go away. Who did I hurt?"

"Right now, all you need to know is that you injured an officer of the law. You have the right to be silent, anything you say can and will be held against you…" she droned on the rest of the Miranda rights. As she did so, with a great deal of satisfaction, she pushed the young lady out of the door, down the steps and to a patrol vehicle's open back door.

Seeing the door closed on her, she asked, "Where is Horatio?"

An officer pointed to the ambulance.

Horatio looked uncomfortable laying on the gurney, an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose.

"Horatio, how are you doing?" Calleigh tried to make her voice sound light, to keep the tremble that wracked her frame from coming through.

He lifted the mask. "I'll be fine. I have to take the obligatory ride to the hospital, of course. I can only hope Alexx will be on duty today. It would be nice to see her."

"You could have just given her a call instead of going through all of this." Both smiled at her effort to lighten the situation. "Give me a call when they release you. I'll be at the station booking Ms. McGrue."

"You got her without incident?" Horatio tried to knit his brow but the injury to the side of his head said no.

"I did." Calleigh smiled her 'proud of myself' smile. "I think she was just scared. Now we get to find out what she was scared of."

Horatio nodded slowly. He would decide after he heard her story whether he would press charges. It could very well be that she had problems enough."

"I came in as soon as I heard. What happened, Horatio?" Alexx, beautiful as ever, even in hospital scrubs, stood with her fists on her hips. She had ripped open the curtains to the examining area and nearly pushed the intern aside.

An overly anxious medic gave her the physical details.

She examined the wound, looking from side to side at it. "A different angle, a quarter of an inch to the right, either could have had you disabled or dead!"

Horatio smiled at his friend. "It didn't and I'm not. If you don't mind a lay opinion, I think I'll be alright."

"Says you! Let me be the judge of that, Lieutenant Caine."

The two were enjoying the familiar repartee.

"Yes, ma'am. And now, how are you?"

"I'm fine. If you wanted to know, you could have called, you know."

"Calleigh reminded me there were better ways to stay in touch."

"I always knew that gal had a good head on her shoulders."

The discussion drifted to Alexx's family and an invitation to dinner.

"Yes, I realize my coming over to see you isn't necessary. Being polite to you on the job isn't necessary either. Now, may I come over or not? I'm concerned about you and want to relieve my anxieties. I also bet you could stand a dinner than you don't have to fix yourself."

"I have food here."

Horatio heard a heavy sigh. "If you're afraid I'll coo and mourn over you, don't. We meet for dinner plenty of times and this time it's at your place. I just figure you can't be in the mood to cook or go out and, yes, I'm concerned but I promise not to pet."

Horatio smiled, in spite of himself. He knew when he should give up and take the generosity of others. "I know of a great Cuban place that serves up take out."

Two hours later, Horatio felt incapable of moving; not because of his head but because he was so relaxed. The bacan (green banana meat pie) was fantastic and there was more than enough for another meal. Then the serving of Opera Cake had been enough for two and then some. Sally had even brought Cuban coffee to compliment the meal.

"You enjoyed your escabeche?"

Sally smiled over the top of her coffee cup. "I did. I've had swordfish before but never cooked in this way. Imagine, cooking it first and then marinating it. Who'd'a thought? And it was complimented perfectly with that avocado and pineapple salad. What is it called again?"

"Ensalada de Aguacate Y Piña." Horatio felt like he was showing off.

That is a great place to eat!"

Horatio almost said he had gone there often with Marisol but put the thought away. Times past were just that and he had no reason to visit them again. "I've been there many times since it opened twelve years ago. They vary the menu so you always have something new."

"Well, all there is to do now is throw the paper plates and plastic cutlery out and for me to steal away into the night."

"You don't have to go. I have nothing to do but sit around and enjoy the evening air out here."

"Oh, really, I should. You could poop out at any time with an injury like that."

Horatio hoped she was just being polite. Having her in his patio, being excellent company, was very nice. "Tell you what; stay long enough to finish your coffee. After that, I've got a bottle of wine I'd like to share. I don't think a half a glass will affect your driving."

"Not after all I had to eat, for certain! Well, look, let's take it half an hour at a time. Anytime you feel like it, say the word and I can be gone, no hard feelings. I just came over to bring food and see how you were."

"And I appreciate it more than you can imagine. Thank you. It almost makes getting shot at worth while."

Horatio was pleased to see Sally's clear eyes turn into shining beacons out of her blushing face. Did this mean she had some feelings for him after all?

An hour later, when she brought out the wine glasses, a full one for him, less than a half for herself, and bent down to place it on the small table beside his chaise, he made his move. Before she could stand up, he reached to her chin and said, "C'm'ere." He gently pulled her face to his and brushed his lips against hers.

Sally withdrew just enough to look into his eyes before she allowed him to draw her in a second time.

What amazed Horatio was how gently intense those eyes of hers became when she slowly withdrew.

"You know, I don't know if this is the right time or place, but could I talk to you about what happened today? I mean about the shooting."

He sat watching Sally seriously consider the matter. After what had just happened, it was so breaking the rules, but on the other hand, he knew the quicker the officer talked about the incident, the more true the details.

"I think it would be alright. It's not standard to talk in personal circumstances. However, I have a feeling you'd have a harder time talking about it formally, in my office or any office anyway. I don't see the harm and it might do you some good to get it out now."

Sally pulled up one of the chairs from either side of the couch and then the other. She placed them facing each other near the railing of the patio and then looked invitingly at Horatio.

He was reluctant to move but knew that to get this mess off of his chest, he would have to do it Sally's way.

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The breeze from over the guard wall was warm as that from a clothing dryer and just as wet. Sally had learned long ago that if she simply gave in to the soggy heat, didn't pay attention to the layer of moisture that was a constant way of life outside of air conditioned indoors, night or day, it was not a bad way to feel.

Facing Horatio with a notepad on her lap, Sally took the conversational lead. "How are you feeling right now? About what happened today, I mean."

Leaning forward so that only the top of his red mop showed, his elbows on his wide spread knees, he examined his hands. His voice was quiet but did not carry the personal whisper it usually did. This time, the quiet was more like a controlled urge to roar. "Angry, betrayed, injured."

Sally wrote three words on three different lines. "Injured feelings?"

"Sure. I was doing my job and I got shot at." His voice went up when he raised his head defiantly.

"Unexpected?"

"It was supposed to be routine questioning. The young woman had refused our request to come in to the department and then she quit answering her phone. We decided to go to her. I went out as Calleigh's backup. We had no idea that she might be armed much less be willing to use it."

"What happened out there?" Although this was more of an IAB question, she wasn't asking for policy sake. As a psychologist, Sally needed to know Horatio's personal feeling what went on, why he acted as he did.

"Calleigh went up to the trailer door and knocked. I stood back and to one side. I had revealed my badge but had no reason to show my weapon." As if in an urge to throw off his frustration, Horatio drew himself up and leaned hard against the back of the chair. "I think I heard the first shot but I don't remember a second. The next thing I knew I was on the ground, hearing Calleigh calling my name. I put up my hand to show I was conscious. I didn't know I'd been hit until we bailed for cover."

"How often have you been injured on the job?"

Horatio examined the sky then lowered his eyes to follow the ocean's horizon dotted with the lights of boats and ships. "I think this might make seven; only one serious enough to put me in the hospital. A stabbing, two shootings and the rest were fractures and muscle pulls in taking someone down."

Sally nodded and let the night sounds of the ocean and people strolling on the walkway below reign while she considered where to take the next step. "What was this case concerning? What was the woman going to be questioned about?"

Horatio explained about Sean Van Meer. "Calleigh said there was reason to ask her more questions."

Nodding in her familiarity with the case she answered, "So the whole thing was supposed to be a routine matter?"

Sally watched Horatio's reaction, the slight turn of the head to one side, the flash of anger in his eyes as they looked down at his own analysis of what had gone down that day. His right hand rose briefly to touch the butterfly bandage on his forehead.

Horatio silently wondered if the devastating news Walter had given him had intruded on how he felt about the shooting. Not that it mattered. In this case, all action had been taken against him.

Avoiding the thought of how glad she was that the injury hadn't intruded into the hairline, Sally continued, "And the lack of the routine ending does what for you?"

"Makes me angry." He paused long enough to remember what the purpose of the conversation was. "Angry, primarily at myself; I don't think I did anything wrong except I got shot."

"Ergo, you must be in the wrong."

His hair glinted in the low light coming from inside his condo as he shrugged slightly.

"Want to think that one over?" She put a hard edge to her voice. This was not meant to be a wishy-washy, bunny hug session.

Horatio's voice was testy. "Meaning?"

"IAB may have a quibble with how you handled the situation. They're out to make sure officers don't do stupid stuff that will either jeopardize the department or the valuable training they sink into the personnel. You know that's not what this session is about. Right now, we're dealing with you. I don't think you buy into the IAB party line so where is the anger coming from?"

Sally wondered what Horatio thought he was going to get out of this talk. Something in his face spoke of confusion. Did he think the kiss a few minutes ago would make this a 'me cry, you hug me and say it's alright' conference with a clean bill of health from her to the department tomorrow? If so, he had another think coming.

This was why she hated this part of her job. She had to let the subject come to their own conclusion and then decide from them if he or she needed some time off, could return to work, or was, perhaps, in need of some clinical therapy. Horatio wouldn't accept anything but a permit to return to work. She wouldn't give it until she was sure he was okay with the events of the day. She couldn't help him except to point the way. Worse, she couldn't hurry the process. So, she sat, looking as calm as she could, resisting the temptation to tap her pencil on the tiny pad she was using to make notes.

She could see the thinking process replace the confusion before he finally said, "Getting shot is likely to make anyone angry, fault or no. I followed proscribed procedure to the letter."

"Bingo!" Sally made a large checkmark on the page more to show Horatio that the issue was solved. "Now, feelings of betrayal?"

The slight movement of the head and the brief lick on the lips said more than the words. "Part of the job. I keep hoping it won't happen and it always does. It will again.

"And," he continued before Sally could speak, "My feelings will be hurt again because I was betrayed. I seem to have lived through it before. Police work can be gratifying, but that's not what we sign up for."

Sally leaned back in relief. Not only could she give him a clean bill of health but it had been a fast process. "Yeah, I believe you are okay." She wrote two more comments and folded her pad, tucking the pencil into its holder. "I'll write a formal report tomorrow and send it up."

Then she added gleefully, "Heh! A shrink report within twenty-four hours of an incident! They won't know what to make of that, will they?"

She paused at Horatio's inquiring look. Well, he was going to have to get used to her rebellious side. It was a passive sort anyway. She just liked to keep the people up the food chain guessing when she could.

Only after returning the chair to its original position beside the small couch did Sally notice her untouched glass of wine. She picked it up and meant to take a sip, say something complimentary, and then make her exit. Before she could take the glass from her lips, Horatio had seated himself on the couch with his glass, stretched his legs out on the low table in front. He lay one arm across the top of the couch and looked invitingly at her.

"I should go. Let you think over what we talked about." She climbed onto the couch and faced him on her knees to better get a look into his eyes. She was still feeling almost high from having conducted the interview so well.

"We don't have to talk. I'd like the company, though."

"No, really, I shouldn't." She looked up behind the couch, across the living room and at the front door. Did it look like it needed opening?

She looked down at Horatio's face and from the look, she could see that the more she resisted, the more he would insist. It was a man thing, to chase. She could also insist. He had put her into the professional mode and now, to switch out of it, this way especially, would be close to unethical. To be honest, however, she just didn't want to resist. Maybe just being company would be what he needed, being injured and all.

"Alright, I'd like to stay…just long enough to finish the wine." She turned to sit.

His face showed satisfaction, as if he had fielded a long ball in a game of catch. "And, since it's been a few minutes since we ate, I'll have to make sure you're sober enough to drive home." The twinkle in his eyes showed he was enjoying playing with the 'catch.'

Sitting closely beside him, which he didn't seem to mind, Sally said, "This is good wine."

"A friend of mine gets a case from Brazil every once in a while and gives me a couple of bottles."

For the next half hour neither one spoke more than a dozen words. Sally took barely a taste of the dry, white wine each time, savoring the richness. Perhaps she was extending the time more than was necessary but she couldn't resist.

When she saw Horatio put his glass down on the chair seat, she knew what would happen next. The first kiss, an hour and a half ago, had been a surprise. This one was a delight. Sally put her glass on the coffee table before she was drawn into his arms.

At first gentle and sweet, it became an exploration. He would pause, back off, and come back for more, each time more boldly exploring with his tongue. His hands, never invading any territory that made her feel uncomfortable, pulled her to him as he leaned forward and over her.

Without a signal from either one, both leaned back. The only difference in their original positions was that Sally was snuggled under Horatio's arm, leaning into his chest.

"Not going to coo and mourn over me, did you say?"

"Who's cooing or mourning? And who started this lovey-dovey stuff anyway?"

"You think maybe that wasn't a good idea?" His voice took on a serious tone.

Popping up, she drew her legs under her and stood on her knees looking down at the grinning redhead trying to look stern. "So, should I go home now?"

Sally felt a gentle caress of Horatio's warm hand on her cheek. "I wish you wouldn't just yet. If you leave now, I'd have to finish your wine and that's probably not a good idea."

The psychologist decided to take a chance. She picked up her wine glass, turned and leaned across Horatio's lap. "You're right. This wine is too good to pour down the drain and you've probably got all you can handle with your glass. I'll stay long enough to drink this."

"Do me one favor?"

"If I can."

Sally could not have been more amazed at what she heard next.

"When I bend my head down, I feel like it's going to explode. Could you get up on your knees like you were a minute ago and kiss me?"

This was a side of Horatio she could not have guessed at. He was not only admitting pain but asking for affection in a new relationship.

"First, slide down just a tad and rest your head against the top of the back cushion." On her knees again, she waited until he was comfortably situated and looking up at her. She was surprised at how husky her voice had become. "Now, hold on to your socks, kiddo." She gently took either side of his face into her hands, bent down and gave him the same treatment he'd given her, with a few variations. She swirled her tongue across his teeth, found his tongue and gentle massaged it until she heard his breath come fast and hard.

Leaning back and looking into the glazed eyes and smiling lips, she playfully asked, "How you doing?"

She was rewarded with a heavy gulp and a whispered, "No problems."

"Head better?"

"Yeah." He hadn't moved.

"You're fun to kiss." She leaned forward before he could answer and kissed him again. This time, when she withdrew from his mouth, she softly kissed the area around it and ended up with one on the tip of his nose.

"And now, as pleasant as this is, I'm going to go." She didn't add that she thought he needed rest, or that she wanted to cut this off before her own urges got the better of her.

Before he could reach for her to pull her in, she got up and went for the front door. "Call me."

She heard a quiet response but couldn't quite catch the words. From the tone, she felt more than assured he would.

Glad the street traffic was heavy, slowing the drive home, the ice-eyed woman analyzed what had occurred, leaving out the interview. That part she would deal with later, when writing up a report. So, he was interested in her, wonderful!

She reviewed her life in the past few years. Since her divorce from Robert twelve years ago her work had improved and her personal life had suffered in equal amounts. Maybe this is what the move to Miami had been about; a realization that it was time to quit hiding in her job. Her only problem now was that she feared that if she let the pent up sexual genie out of the bottle, she'd scare off Horatio and make a damned fool of herself.

Hmm, Horatio, come to think of it, aside from his professional aspect, what did she know about him? Tonight she'd shared a gentle side that she hadn't really suspected. He also knew how to state what he needed.

Why was he attracted to her? Was he attracted to her? Maybe he was one of those men who gave himself the responsibility of sharing himself with as many women as possible, no matter who. Maybe he was a love 'em 'n' leave 'em type.

'And you're trying to back off, aren't you?' she admonished herself. 'Let it be! You may have broken the rules with the psych interview but it was accomplished and well done. If it ever comes to the need for him to need another review, you'd hand it over to someone else, period. Then, you had a wonderful time. If it never happens again or goes bust in the end, it was meant to be.' She was finally able to direct her car down quieter residential streets, heading for her little duplex.

Later, in bed, she had no choice but to relieve her sexual tension. It didn't take much effort to reach the fireworks stage. 'Wow!' she thought, 'and I thought I wasn't much interested anymore.'

Finally, she fell asleep, thinking of Horatio's face as he leaned his head back, ready for her kiss.

Hearing Sally's request to call her, Horatio had said, "Damn straight I will," but purposely too quiet for her to have understood. As soon as the door closed, he'd laid his head back onto the cushion and examined the past few hours. The day's events he'd already examined, put into their proper places, and felt ready to move on. The evening, however, was a different thing altogether.

Sadly, because of the Miami lights, there were few stars to contemplate. He made do with the few there were. No doubt she was interested then. He'd taken a chance, kissing her like that and then asking for an interview. As soon as he'd opened his mouth, he figured he was sunk. It was purely by accident, perhaps he still wasn't thinking straight, not seeing consequences to actions. He had to credit her for taking it in stride. She'd made the switch from personal to pro and back again without so much as a blink.

Nor had she shown any indication of how much she didn't like 'shrinking heads' as she'd put it so often. Of course, this was different. All she had to do was to make sure he was fit to return to duty, didn't carry any fears, or harbor any resentment that would put his valuable hide in danger, jeopardize the shooter or any of the population in general.

Horatio lifted his head. 'Is that what put the killer cop over the edge? Not being able to tolerate all that was asked of an officer anymore?' He couldn't help the dark thought invading his land of hearts and flowers. 'There was no doubt now that the sexual assailant and the killer were one and the same. Now, they had to look for a trigger. Sometimes the thin line, the do's and don'ts, one often contradicting the other, all seeming to help out everyone but the cop, was just too much to tolerate. Then there were the usual run of horrors and stupidities. Some men drank to relieve themselves, some beat their wives, and some executed the bad guys before they were dually arrested and properly convicted. Maybe sexual assault was a new twist. No excuse but something to look for in questioning.' He examined the horizon lights from what he could see through the guard rail bars a few feet away. Mentally, he was ticking off the various resources he could use, when the time came.

Pleasantly, Sally's face reappeared in his imagination and he laid his head back, wondering if she was going to kiss him or laugh wildly and leap from couch to chair to lounge. He didn't know her well enough to know if that wild look went more than skin deep. His mind recreated the kiss and the several that followed.

He sighed quietly, feeling a familiar pressure below his beltline. Not sure if he had the justification, hoping permission would be given at some point in the future, his mind went to private places. He visualized putting his lips just under the aureole of her small breast, the left one if he had his positioning right. He wanted to feel the skin with his lips, taste it.

Once that door had been opened, his hands were on her waist and down to her hips and belly, kneading the flesh tenderly. He hoped she would want to wind him in, pull him close to her with her legs and arms, let him know she wanted him.

A few minutes later, he punched a familiar code into his cell.

"Sally? I didn't wake you, did I?"

Her voice sounded happy. "No, I just got home. Traffic was heavy."

"As it usually is in this area.

"You said to call you."

"I did, didn't I?" There was a pause. "I had a great time this evening."

"We'll have to do it again only without shooting part or the psych interview."

He heard a giggle. "Do you realize we spent a good part of two hours together not talking about work?"

Horatio thought of the dinner conversation where they'd exchanged their points of view on life. Letting that go, he couldn't help saying, "I don't think we did much talking at all after a while."

He wondered if she was smiling as she said, "It was talk, just the quiet kind."

"Reading Braille with our lips."

He heard a loud guffaw. "That's a good one."

"I'll let you go. I was just following doctor's orders."

"You might as well say it, you were thinking of me, weren't you?"

"I was. Are you surprised?"

"I didn't say to call me for nothing. I'm as vain as the next girl and I like being told a man is thinking of me. And now, that we got this far, I can say, 'G'night. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Good night." He hung up.

Half an hour later, relaxed, hopeful, he stumbled to bed and fell into a deep sleep.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Stiffly holding her hands down to her lap as if they would leap up and attack her, Linda McGrue's crackled as she screamed. "You don't understand!"

Calleigh sat across the table, coldly facing the girl. "Perhaps you can explain so I will understand."

Linda had refused legal counsel. Her voice turned into a whine. "Sean said he loved me but he wouldn't stop seeing all of those other girls! He insulted me, made a fool of me!"

"So, you shot him."

"I didn't think I had hit him. I didn't mean to kill him. That was an accident."

Frank stood leaning against a window frame. He removed his hand from his jaw. "Wouldn't a slap have been as effective?"

Linda stared down at her hands as they twitched. "I tried that once. I walked right up to him in front of the others and smacked him. Two of the girls laughed at me and the rest hovered around Sean as if I had hit him with a baseball bat.

"Maybe I should have." Ms McGrue's forehead knitted showing she'd never had botox injections.

"Describe what happened that night in the club." Calleigh had to be sure the events expressed by Ms. McGrue coincided with the forensic evidence.

"Sean said to meet him there if I wanted to talk to him."

"How did he know you wanted to talk to him?"

"I'd called him to tell him again how I felt about him being with other women. He'd been ignoring me, not calling, not inviting me over to his place."

"Gee, after getting slapped, I wonder why?" Frank's tone of voice was belligerent. "You can't have it both ways."

Calleigh glanced up at Frank. Anyone who didn't know her wouldn't have recognized the look she gave him was a silent warning to stay out of her case or hear her wrath later.

Frank shifted uncomfortably under the tiny woman's admonishment.

"So, you went to meet him. Was he there?"

"Yes. He was at a large booth. I didn't think anything of it at the time. It was early, before the band started playing and quiet enough to talk."

"You told him you didn't want him being with other women? What was his reaction?"

"He said the others never meant anything to him."

"And, did you believe him?"

"The way he kissed me after he told me, I did. It was so sweet and nice."

"Then what made you change your mind about him?"

"After a couple of drinks, I had to go to the Powder Room. I was fixing myself up, ready for a great evening, when Tracey Capella came in. She had the nerve to tell me I'd better hurry before the booth filled up and there would be no room for me. I asked her what she meant and she said that she and Brittany and Dawn were there already and she heard him say he was expecting more."

After a long pause, Calleigh urged, "Is that when you went out to shoot him?"

"Not until after I had told that cold fish that they had all better go home because Sean was mine now. She goes, 'Oh pul-eeze, you don't mean anything more to him than any of us do.' I was going to go up to her to slap her silly when she got all tall on me and said, 'Don't even think about it. There's nothing to get mad at. You'll get your share.'

"Like I want to share! So, I went out to see for myself. I could see the booth from the hallway and I was shocked to see Sean surrounded by women after he'd promised to be faithful to me. He couldn't even wait a day!" By this time, she'd pulled her hand out and had begun gesturing ending the last statement by slamming both fists on the table.

"The rest of what happened was just surreal. I was coming out of the bathroom. The other shooting started and people were running everywhere. I saw Sean jump up, shoving the other girls out of his way. I don't remember the rest very well." Her voice trailed off.

"What do you remember?"

"I think I pulled the gun out of my purse and pointed it at him. After that, all I can remember is running down the alley. I must have been halfway to the street and I was thinking, 'forget about this, forget about it.' I must have shot Sean and then run out. I threw the gun away someplace because when I got home, I didn't have it."

"Where did you get the gun in the first place?"

"My mother bought it for me when I started college. She said even the fancy college boys could be a danger."

"And the second gun? The one you fired at me and Lieutenant Caine?"

Ms McGrue blinked. "I'm sorry. I really am. I just wanted you to go away and leave me alone. I had to figure out what to do. When I heard you, I guess I just lost it. I think I would have turned myself in when I was ready. I'm really sorry."

"That isn't how it works, Ms McGrue. You can refuse to come in for questioning, but to say you will and not show up, not answer your phone, that has a way of peaking our interest.

"Now, where did you get the second gun?"

"My father said the one my mother gave me was next to useless and gave me a bigger one. It was too big to carry around so I kept it at home."

"You say you can't remember shooting Sean?"

"I think I remember aiming at him, wanting to shoot him, but, no, I don't remember doing it."

Satisfied, Calleigh nodded at Frank and left the room with him. When Frank closed the door, both walked out of Lucy's line of sight.

"We got her, Cal. Opportunity and a hell of a lot of motive."

"She thought she had found love and he played her but good."

"Those others didn't help the situation." Frank did not like mean girls.

"No one helped. Linda is one of those who's family is just well enough off to send her to the good schools but she's too poor to join in the other kids' games unless they say so. I don't think she even understood the rules of the game. Maybe she didn't get it was a game for these kids."

"I guess we're going to have to book her for both shootings."

"No, Frank, don't bother. I don't think she did shot Sean."

"You just agreed she did!"

"I agreed she had motive but whether she could have, in fact, I doubt. It's just not adding up. Remember, there were no fingerprints on the gun. That means she would have had presence of mind in all that flurry of people running and shooting to wipe the gun clean. She's more the type to have panicked and blacked out for a few minutes, avoiding even the thought of wanting to injure Sean. She wouldn't have had the presence of mind to wipe a gun clean as she was running. She may be clinically mentally ill, Frank, I don't know. For now, all we've got her on for sure is shooting blindly and hitting Horatio in the process.

"This is one time I wouldn't mind calling in the Wild Eyed Wonder Woman to see if the girl is nuts. I think she was pushed too far, once too often. Maybe she snapped."

Calleigh's eyes popped wide. "Frank! You have a soft spot for a perp? And you want to get a psych eval? Either you've been holding out on me or I've ruined you!"

Frank sneered. "Oh, get over yourself woman! Let's discuss how much of what's been ruined later tonight. For now, I'll drop down and send Dr. Brandt up here and then write my report on the interrogation."

"I'm looking forward to this evening!" Calleigh was tempted to toy with her hair but knowing there were too many eyes seeing every move in this house of glass, she stood straight and as tall as she could. "Meanwhile, I'll start Linda on writing her version of what drove her to shoot at us through the closed door. By the time Sally gets up here, she might have something to work with."

Herrero pulled himself up to his full height and still had to look up to the redhead in front of him. "We have two men who have been on the force since 1996. Both still do patrol. What about it?"

"I just need to interview them, find out their routine, take a look at their cars." Horatio had a way of bending his head and seeming to look up to shorter people. He knew he didn't have to be less threatening to a fellow officer but it couldn't hurt, either.

"I can do that myself and send you a report." The captain's chin rose defiantly.

Horatio was sympathetic with the protection this man wanted to afford his men. While he examined his fingers, he searched for a way to break through the brick wall Herrero presented and get his own job done. "That isn't how this works, Alphonso. There is no way any of this is going to reflect badly on you or this division."

"I do my own work with my men, Horatio!"

The CSI Lieutenant knew Herrero was only doing what he himself would do; protecting his team. "Not in this kind of a case. Homicide and Forensics is a Miami-Dade sector and you know it. This is no longer only a cop accosting women in the field. We are finding links between the two sets of crimes."

Herrero was fighting a losing battle and Horatio could see that he knew it. He hoped silence would allow the captain to see his way clear to showing Horatio a room where he could conduct the interviews. The next step would be to hope either of those patrolmen hadn't suddenly disappeared or called in sick.

"Officer Dickenson, how long have you been in the force?"

"Since 1996, Lieutentant."

"And you do most of your patrols alone?"

"Yes, for the last five years or so. Budget cuts, y'a know." Dickenson's northern Alabama drawl pleasantly slowed his words.

"Is the Flats Farm part of your area?"

"Not really, but I've been there when we're bustin' up drug parties." He paused as if he remembered something. "I think one or two of the guys stop there for breaks, though."

"But not you?"

In spite of a fairly fit figure, Dickenson had one of those round faces that made him look chubby. His cheeks spread as he grinned. "Nah. I have a place of my own on my beat." He squinted his eyes for a moment. "Does this have anything to do with Toler's girl bein' killed?"

"I don't know yet, officer. Thank you for you help." Horatio knew that the officer was perfectly aware that he might be lying about the link between the killings. Nothing in the rule book said the interviewer/interrogator had to tell the truth.

While waiting for Officer Mike Price to come in from his beat, Horatio talked with Eric about his examination of Dickenson's patrol car.

"The tires have been changed too recently to know if they could be a match to any tread prints Wolfe took. If there ever was anything inside, he had cleaned it out as procedure dictates after each shift. I took dirt samples from inside the wheel wells and what I could find inside the engine. I'll do a comparison with what we have from the murder sights and the ones where we know women were attacked."

"Good work, Eric. And now, unless I'm mistaken, I think that is our next officer in question."

"I understand Herrero had made arrangements with an extra officer to take over Price's patrol while he came directly from his route. That means plenty of trace." Eric had a grin like a hungry tiger looking at a crippled buffalo.

From the start, there was something in Price's demeanor in the interview room that set up a red flag for Horatio. He tried to set it aside; the man's tenseness could have been nothing more than a dislike of a small space, for being questioned. Yet, there was more to it, Horatio was sure.

Price finally leaned back in the chair and crossed his heavily muscled arms. Even seated and without his weapons, the grey eyed, mustached man was an imposing figure.

Being more comfortable standing, Horatio let a few seconds pass before starting the interview. A habit of many years, he leaned a shoulder against the wall to one side of the small table. Then he began; after confirming that Price had started his service in 1996, he questioned his current route of patrol and his routine.

The veteran officer seemed to have no problem saying he often stopped at the Flats Farm to finish reports, to sit in the shade waiting for a call. "Some days, you know, you just gotta get out of that freakin' sun for a while!"

"Did you ever see Mitzi out there?"

"Toler's kid?" There was the slightest pause. "No. She wasn't the kind that went in for what went on there."

"The parties, you mean."

"I'm pretty sure I would have recognized her in the busts we made out there."

"What about seeing her out there alone?"

Again that slight pause. "Not that I can remember…Hey, wait a minute! You aren't thinking I did anything to her?" Price began to rise out of the chair.

"Sit down, please. Why, Officer Price, would I think that?" There were times when Horatio could menacingly purr his voice. He stood upright and spread his legs. "I'm just wondering if you ever saw her out there alone or perhaps with a single friend, something like that?"

Relaxing, Price shook his head. "No, never. I mean, you couldn't miss that yellow bug, now could you? And I wasn't out there on the day she was found! That was my day off."

"How about the night before?"

"I was on a double shift until two in the freakin' morning! I was shitfaced tired when I got home, but not shitfaced if you get my drift. I got off duty and I went home. You need to make something of it? Go ahead!"

"I hope I won't have to."

He thanked Price for coming in and dismissed him.

Picking up the video of the interviews he found Eric still working on the car.

"Plenty of trace inside. I won't know what it is until I can analyze it all. I don't think it's anything since the car is generally used by two or three different officers in any twenty-four hour period."

"And seeing as how they have to clean their cars after each shift, we may be where we started in that regard."

"One thing I did discover while talking with the motor pool guy here. To save money, when they change tires, they take the one in the best shape to use as a spare. The tires on this car were changed just yesterday and the best is in their spare wheel collection in the garage now."

"I'm assuming you took an impression of Price's spare?"

Eric put on his goofy grin. "Is the Pope Catholic?"

A few minutes later, he and Eric headed back to the lab.

Unfortunately for Horatio, when he arrived, Sally was just finishing up with Linda McGrue. Although he hadn't seen her face during the shooting or at all until then, seeing her gave the side of his head a twang. Perhaps that was the problem; knowing she had shot blindly, not at him in particular had brought down that wall he had between himself and people who shot at him. Somehow, random shootings that injured him or others were most annoying; gave him the urge to go in, grab the perpetrator and to say, 'How dare you?' and want to throw the book at them.

Even so, when Sally looked up from her interviewing process and saw him standing there and smiled, his wound felt soothed, his antipathy waned slightly. Before she could turn back to her current subject, Horatio held up the video cassette to indicate he wanted her to look at it when she was done.

Three hours later, Sally laid a folder with her notes about the two interviews on Horatio's desk.

"Long story short, I'm thinking Price is your man both for the assaults and the murders. Not only does he feel entitled to whatever perks his position might offer, he is aggressive when challenged. Mitzi was probably his first act of violence that ended in murder. She knew how police should behave and since her father is a detective, didn't think she was in danger when she objected to his advances."

"He strangled her then threw her into the silo. That seems odd behavior for a police officer."

"It drove him over the edge. Besides, police aren't trained in what the newly dead people look like. Ordinarily, even if they think they've verified it, police let the medic do the final pronounce. You know that. He wanted to make sure she was dead after he'd strangled her. The thoroughness from his police academy days had him make sure. That's probably why he dumped her from the top of the silo. Maybe he was more confident with Thalia Duda a little later. So he didn't disturb the body after he'd pushed her over the railing."

Looking up from his chair, Horatio said, "We still can't put him at either crime scene for sure. 'If' he did it, you have the reasons but that's all."

"Two hours of analysis and you say 'all'?" She pointed at the folder.

His smiled. "Your work will be crucial in the courtroom. Our work has to show if there's reason for him to be there in the first place."

Sally's face showed her frustration. "Yeah, yeah! Excuses, excuses!" She turned to leave and shot over her shoulder, "Just remember who to thank when you get a conviction."

Without a pause, Horatio returned with, "Dinner tonight?"

Just as the door closed, he heard, "Sure! Call me."

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

It was one of those rare quiet nights in Miami when the tourists were either on a flight in to the city to pick up a cruise or already out on the ocean, when college kids were safely in dorm rooms preparing for classes and when most of the local working folks were home enjoying their hard earned benefits.

They had decided on an upscale Italian restaurant in one of the many tourist trap villages-by-the-sea in Miami. Not a mere spaghetti joint, this place served only freshly made salads, accompanied by the best Italian cheeses and meats and made with locally grown vegetables. The hand made pastas were accompanied with top grade meats with sauces that could only be described as inspired delights. Cooked vegetables were drizzled with the finest, extra virgin olive oil and then grilled to perfection. Desserts were few because they were seldom ordered and varied according to what the chef decided was the best accompaniment to that day's menu.

After ordering, Sally got right down to business. "You know, when you were signaling me about the tapes you had this afternoon, your attention wasn't entirely on me in that room."

"Was it that obvious?"

"To me, yes. Fighting any ill feelings against Ms McGrue?"

Again that furtive rise of the hand as if to touch his forehead, a dip of the head downward. "I think frustration is more like it. Every officer in a shooting has to consider how it could have been avoided in the first place. Every officer that gets hit wonders what he did wrong, why he was in the wrong position. Knowing there is no answer to either question, that it's mostly a matter of luck, like getting hit by a drunk driver while driving down the road, doesn't help."

Sally laid her hand out on the table which Horatio took. "Right answer. Subject done." She looked around. "Now, this is a really nice place. Do you come here often?"

Horatio remembered a few years ago, a dinner with Yelena followed by a brief conversation and then another conversation with a man concerned about his son. "No, not often. I don't think it's changed all that much though. Once these Village places hit on a good idea, they tend to stick with it."

The rest of dinner was made up of similar small talk, accidental brushing of feet under the small table, occasional hand holding, smiles that invited understanding. The staff, seeing what was going on, kindly seated the few other patrons at a distance, and attended only when summoned.

Later, when Horatio suggested an after dinner walk by the water, Sally replied, "May I make a suggestion first?"

Not speaking, Horatio's slight head twist and quizzical showed he was open to whatever she might have to say.

"Let's go to your car where you can dump that jacket, the shirt and the shoes and socks. I'll leave my shoes. If we're going to go to the beach, let's dress for it!"

Twenty minutes later, Sally was really glad she'd wanted Horatio to be comfortable. This wasn't for his sake alone; his body, for being over fifty, was in fantastic shape. She was a sucker for a few muscle bulges.

Miami beaches were for beautiful young bodies, children and fun in the sun during the day. At night, they were for romance and both of these strollers knew it. They had hardly walked out of the glow of the nearest light over the walkway when Horatio took Sally in his arms for the first time.

After their lips parted and they wrapped arms around each other's waists, it wasn't too many more steps into the developing darkness that he did it again. The third time, Sally invited the joining of their mouths.

By the fifth kiss they'd reached a small group of palms. Here Sally was able to lean into a natural cradle of the upward curve and look up into Horatio's face, or what she could see of him in the dark. By this time, it didn't matter what he looked like. He knew where she was and found her again and again. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and the sound of their breathing mixed with the sighs of the breeze through the palm branches.

After a few minutes, Horatio stood up and pulled Sally to her feet. Together, both strolled to their parked cars. It wasn't until they'd opened their own doors that Horatio spoke.

"Your place or mine?"

Without hesitation, she said, "Mine."

A while later, in her dimly lit bedroom, it took only one kiss for the passion of the beach to rise for both of them.

Sally had been fairly sure what the course of the evening would be and had dressed accordingly. She had worn a one tie, wrap around dress.

Horatio had noticed the style from the first moment he'd met her in the restaurant. From the moment he'd pulled her up from the palm tree, he'd known what he would do as soon as he got the chance.

While their lips met, his hands found the string that let the dress loose. Meanwhile, her hands went for the belt at his waist. When she felt the dress fall loose she stopped what she was doing and drew her shoulder back, letting the dress fall to the floor around her feet.

Raising her face, she looked into his eyes to see the vast approval as he surveyed her.

Now, not bothering to kiss, both again got busy with their projects of unwrapping their prizes. She preferred front closure bras so once opened, it was a mere matter of drawing her shoulders back and letting the gear fall. Again, he seemed to approve of the handful sized, pink tipped breasts.

Finally, his slacks fell, revealing green silk boxer shorts and, as she suspected, not only a sizable tent at his groin but rather respectably muscled legs as well.

Sally couldn't help but say, "I'm surprised."

The voice was a mix of alarm, unease and perhaps anger. "How so?"

"Green boxer shorts? I pegged you for regulation police down to the skin."

"Latest technology; they automatically change to a brighter color when I'm off duty." He bent down, seeking her tongue, rubbing his hands across her bare back and down to her silk covered rump.

"Now, its my turn, Doctor. Just stand there a moment."

"Whatever you say, Lieutenant."

To her great delight, Horatio went down on one knee in front of Sally. At first, all he did was look at her from that angle. It was as if he were examining a crime scene for any evidence, taking it all in. He twisted his head at each angle then brought it upright and moved on. Finally, as if he were sure of his ground, he raised his large hands to the tan lace band around the top of the neon pink panties, gently inserted his thumbs and carefully inched the material down, past the top of her pubic hairs, past the top of the natal crack in back, past the bottom of the hips. The slow progression gained in pace the lower the underwear went until, once at the middle of the thigh, he had them at a gravity pace to the floor.

Stepping out as the young Venus did from her shell, Sally said, "And now, its my…"

Horatio put a finger to her lips. "If you would, please, just climb onto the bed; I'll take care of the rest."

As quickly as Horatio shucked out of his shorts, Sally thought he was done the preliminaries. There was no doubt; he wanted to go on to other business. However, at first, all he seemed to want to do was simply to admire her. He sat on the edge of the bed, looking at her in the same way he had looked at her panty line before taking them off. By the time he slid beside her, facing her, she had the idea that he pretty well knew what she was about.

For the next hour, the two admired each other much more physically as well as intimately.

An hour after that, when both were satisfied in body and spirit, Sally murmured, "Well, it seems we have found the secret to being together and not discussing business."

Horatio was surprised at the burst of laughter that erupted from him. "Yes, it seems so."

With that, he rolled onto his side and leaned over to kiss her. Before he knew it, he slid down a couple of inches and laid his head between her breasts and wrapped his arms around her. At first, he tried to analyze why he would act so vulnerably but as soon as he felt Sally's hand rubbing gently across his back and shoulders, it felt so right, he sighed and relaxed. The only other woman he had felt so personally safe with had been given over to his brother.

Half an hour later, he lifted up and one and, reaching for the place he'd been resting on, he gently massaged it and was gratified to find the nipple growing hard in response. He slowly rolled the hardening piece of flesh between his thumb and forefinger and felt her chest rise and shift under him. One of her hands found his hair and dove into it, finding the scalp and brought his head down back to her chest. Resisting, he rose and shifted himself higher up so he could kiss her lips. Showing her need, her hand fell to the back of his neck and pulled his face closer to her while their tongues wound and collided, their lips sucked and nibbled. As she opened herself more and more to him, he slid from her lips, kissing her cheeks, her chin, neck, shoulders and more. Every touch brought a moan of pleasure from deep inside of her and, for him, the most pleasurable of moves from her body.

The next morning, waking with a start, he found Sally had just sat up. Her giggled words brought a broad smile to his lips. "I think we're going to be late."

The evening before, standing at Calleigh's front door, Frank hesitated before entering. He could almost hear her snapping at him already. And for what? Just like she was, he'd been doing his job! He'd been pushing at Ms McGrue, working her, just like Calleigh was. Why should Calleigh get all bent out of shape if he stepped in now and again? Oh, sure, she gave him pats on his head for suggesting the psych eval, giving McGrue the benefit of the doubt about her mental stability. That didn't mean she wasn't going to give him what for about the other.

While he was cogitating all of this, the door opened. "Are you going to stand out there all night?"

Avoiding her kiss, Frank walked in, deciding to beard the lion immediately. "I was just wondering if tonight was a good idea."

Calleigh sat on the couch and motioned for him to do the same. "So, alright, let's talk about it, Frank. I'm not sure what you mean."

Sitting none to close to her, Frank said, "I'm talking about when we were interrogating Linda McGrue. You seemed to get your back up a couple of times."

There was no familiar reassuring smile, no bright batting of her eyelashes over those cool blue-green eyes. "Yes, I did. You, as well as anyone should know, I won't tolerate any interference while I'm questioning someone."

"I thought she could use a push."

"If you'd been doing the questioning, how would you feel if I thought she needed a little more concern or sympathy?"

Taken by surprise, Frank considered that aspect. After a while, he answered, "I'd have thought you were nuts and had a serious discussion with you interfering with my case." He had placed his elbows on his thighs. While thinking about what he'd said, he stared for a few seconds at his hands fidgeting with each other. "I can't say I'll never do it again, but if I do, feel free to kick my ass to Texas and back."

Calleigh reached over to put a small hand over his large ones to quiet them. "Nah, I'll just make you have a serious talk again. You'll hate that worse than a kick."

Pulling himself up straight, heaving a large sigh, the big man said, "You got that right." Then, purposefully, he leaned forward on his elbows again and stared downwards. "Okay, next subject for discussion."

Calleigh waited longer than Frank expected her to while he maintained a silence. "Yes? Frank! Come on, give!" He enjoyed the frustration in her voice.

"About that crack as to whether you'd ruined me!" He grabbed her and almost made as if to bend her over his knee but at the last moment, twisted her so she was laying on her back in his lap, looking up at him. He tried to sound serious. "My association with you has only made a better man of me. Even before we were dating, just working with you kept me on my professional toes. Now, getting close to you, I'm learning all kinds of things. I don't consider that to be ruination by any means." His voice became softer as he finished. Holding her tenderly, stroking the side of her face as he finished, he finally bent down to kiss her.

Calleigh answered his kiss by putting her arms around his neck and letting him pull her up while she hitched her fanny onto his lap. After that, the dinner she had started, chicken gumbo, simmered for half an hour longer while they shamelessly made out like two teenagers.

An hour later, sitting on her postage stamp sized patio in the back of her bungalow apartment, listening to the faint hum of the dishwasher, Calleigh announced, "By the way, I'm glad you suggested that we bring in Dr. Brandt to talk with Linda"

"Oh? Now I'm not ruined?"

"Oh Frank, get serious! Ms McGrue said a couple of things that just didn't sound right to me anyway. Sally's conclusions have reinforced what I thought."

"Which are?"

"She didn't say much when she left the interview except that she thought Linda McGrue didn't kill Sean Van Meer."

"Just because the girl doesn't remember doing it? Lots of people blank out on committing a murder, or at least, say they have. It doesn't mean they're any less guilty or that what they say is even true."

"Do you remember that she said she found herself running down the alley thinking, 'forget about this, just forget it'?"

"Okay, so?"

"I think she was remembering what someone said to her."

"What did Dr Brandt say about this?"

"I don't know, I haven't seen her report yet. I just don't think Linda would kill someone she thought she was in love with."

Putting the last dish in a cupboard, Frank sighed. He turned to Calleigh putting all but one part of the day's work out of his mind. "I guess we'll have to find out tomorrow. Right now though, I want to settle something else."

"Like what?"

"You thought you were ruining me?"

"Oh, that!" Calleigh's face lit up with her smile. "Are you still…"

Before she could finish, Frank swung her around. He planted a kiss on her mouth. At the same time, he lifted the light patio gown she had changed into after work, and then he hefted her onto the kitchen table that had just been cleared. Dropping his own trousers, he whispered, "Let's just see how ruined I am."

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Dissembling was one of Horatio's hallmarks so he easily passed off the questioning looks of the lab team as he walked by. After all, he could just as easily been late because of an early morning meeting with the department brass as getting the best night's sleep he had had in a couple of years.

Finding who he wanted, he asked, "What have you got for me, Eric?"

"The tread is a match to Price's car, H. He parked right beside her car that night."

As relaxed as he'd been a moment ago, that was as sad, angry and frustrated the veteran detective was now.

Eric, seeing a flame in his boss' eyes such as he'd rarely seen before, knew enough to remain quiet and to stand back. Horatio Caine could be a dangerous man when encountered in this mood.

Recovering as much composure as he could under the circumstances, Horatio whispered, "Thank you Eric. Excuse me," and stepped out into the elegantly designed lab hallway. Standing under the slanting glass walls, he pulled out his phone. Waiting for an answer, he braced his legs apart, waiting for impact. "Captain Herrero, is Officer Michael Price on duty today?"

"When he comes in, don't send him out. I am sending out two officers to pick up him up and bring him into Miami."

"Yes, I suggest you do call the police legal defense."

"Of course you can follow them in. He'll need all the support he can get."

Folding the phone and putting it in his pocket, he turned at the sound of Calleigh's tuneful voice.

"Horatio, I'm going to interview Linda McGrue again."

The lieutenant's head thrummed a beat.

"To what end, Calleigh?"

"I just don't think she shot Van Meer."

"Her gun did put the bullet into his chest?"

"It did but there were no fingerprints on the gun. Forensics can't put the gun into her hand when it fired that bullet. Before talking with her, I'm going over the gun again. I just feel like the puzzle has a piece missing, is all."

"Keep me posted." He knew Calleigh had given him a second glance before she left, wondering why he sounded distracted.

"Officer, do you know why you are here?"

Price assumed the same defensive position he had at his own station. The lawyer seated next to him showed an immediate counter to the hostile move by leaning forward with his hands on the table.

Just as Price was about to speak, the lawyer put his hand up. "As I understand it, you questioned him before about the death of Mitzi Toler at the Flats Farm location. Am I correct?"

"And we are going to question him about having committed the murder now."

Price exploded into action, rising from his chair. "What the freakin' hell?"

The lawyer put a hand on the officer's arm and settled him back into his chair. "On what evidence?"

If Horatio had the superpower of turning himself into flames when angry, he would have been a blazing torch. As it was, his blue eyes glowed, his shoulders were hunched in front of bunched back muscles that yearned to help arms to reach out and drag the officer from across the table and beat him to a bloody pulp. Instead, he leaned on his hands to keep them in check. "You were careful about leaving evidence that would tell on you, only you missed one thing on the body; a bit of gold thread from the Miami-Dade police officer insignia on your uniform."

The lawyer acted as if he were going to rise to leave. "All officers wear an insignia with the same gold thread. If that's all you have…"

Speaking steadily, staring into Price's glaring brown eyes, Horatio continued. "Thread, like almost anything else, is made in very large amounts at a time and used in very large amounts. Each batch varies slightly even when made at the same factory. When a batch is used up, a new one is made."

"What has this got to do with Price?" The lawyer's voice wasn't sounding nearly so confident.

"In 1994, the company that made the uniform insignias for Miami-Dade knew they were going to go out of business and so only ordered enough thread to make emblems for that year's graduating rookies. The following year, another company was employed."

"You can't tell me that no more thread than what was made for these badges was made, Caine!"

"The rest of the thread was used in many other locations all about a thousand miles or more from Miami.

The thread we found has a particularly refractive index; it glows more in light, looks more gold. No matter how often it is cleaned, no matter how old it gets, how often it is transferred from one uniform to another, the thread retains the same characteristics. A light spectrometer will prove that. Only officers who graduated in 1994 wear that insignia on their arm sleeve."

"Still not enough."

"That's right which is why we went the extra mile, so to speak."

At no time had Horatio's scowl wavered from the stony face in front of him. "When we found the two bodies, you thought you'd cover your ass by ordering a tire change just a little bit early on your vehicle. In spite of tight money, you got away with it. You knew the old tires were tossed at a tire dump and you figured we'd never find them."

The lawyer blustered, "First a thread and now you say you found a tire at a dump of a million or more tires? How gullible do you think we are?"

What happened next nearly had Eric, standing at the door, jumping out of his shoes in alarm.

Horatio pushed the large glass topped table so that it forced the rising lawyer to sit down and the officer who'd been belligerently tilting his chair back to tip to all four legs. At the same time, he roared, "Shut your fucking mouth!"

The seated men, swimming in the tension, glanced at each other.

"One thing you didn't think about is that, to save money, the state demands that on all state vehicle tire changes, the best of the four is used as a spare."

Suddenly Price's face fell. He glanced quickly at the lawyer who looked in nervous expectation at the angry redhead leaning at his client.

"The tread from the spare in your vehicle matches perfectly with the tread mark on the ground found next to Mitzi Toler's car."

Depending on how one looked at it, the minute that followed that remark was either the longest minute in time as all parties looked at the consequences of what had just been said and tried to find ways those could be changed, or, in retrospect, the shortest minute as one man's fate was sealed forever.

"Eric, call in an officer to handcuff this…man." His lip curled at the polite term he had to use.

Once Price's hands were cuffed behind him and his rights were read, Horatio growled, "Now get him out of my sight."

Sally leaned back in her chair. "Either theory could work, Calleigh. Forensic psych is a mushy business at best. Linda is lucky in that she hasn't gone around the bend mentally. She's one of those who was raised in a rough environment. It sounds like her mother had a few mental issues of her own. Linda said she often felt like the character Alice from 'Alice in Wonderland;' she was never sure of the rules, never could tell what would happen next.

"It sounds like she was used by the other girls as a standard of unattractiveness. It often happens in cliques. They use some 'babe in the woods' type as something of a combination joke and reminder of what they would be if not for their lookalike friends. Once again, Linda didn't know the rules but that was normal.

"What seemed to save her was believing that Sean was attracted to her. Her mother still had some sway over her and had impressed her that one reason to go to college was to get a man with a real future. Apparently there was some sort of deadline since there wasn't enough money to pay for such an expensive school for the entire four years.

"So, that, plus the betrayal she was finally recognizing just may have split her off from her memory. Like Alice, it could have been a dream.

She's aware of what she may have done and will probably get over the impulse to use a gun as an answer to making problems go away. She might be able to do a temporary insanity plea."

Calleigh leaned back against Sally's small desk looking down at her. "My sense is that she didn't do it at all. Forensically, we've got nothing on her except for ownership of the gun and motive. On the other hand, we've got no one else with motive."

Sally tented her fingers under her chin then clasped her hands and put the knuckles to her lips, frowning all the while. "I agree, actually. She was there, her statement shows she was angry, yet, I don't see her doing it. I think I've heard Horatio say something like when something doesn't make sense, take something out of the equation, and see what happens." She shrugged. "You might try taking her out of the picture. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you."

An hour later, Calleigh was at Freddy's Firewater Stand. In spite of the owner's protests, she had blocked off the rear fire door and was carefully examining the area around the push handle. Her conversation with Sally had convinced her that she was looking for evidence that either had to irrevocably convict Linda or that would, without doubt, point to someone else.

Late that afternoon, Valera found Calleigh standing at the under lit evidence table staring at the collection of evidence with a satisfied look. "Girl!" she said, handing the lieutenant several envelopes, "You owe me, big time!"

Calleigh looked properly chastised. "How many different contributors on that door handle did you find?"

"Six! Four on one end and two on the other. Most people know to push in the center but if you're in a panic, it's easy to try to shove where the handle meets the holding mechanism and lose a piece of skin. The information about each if them is in those envelopes." She gave Calleigh a look of reproach. "And now, I'm going to crawl home and into a hot tub, surrounded by some lovely candles."

Calleigh's eyes glowed with mischief. "Alone?"

Maxine had already pulled out her phone. "Not if I can help it." She turned on her heel and walked out of earshot.

Half an hour later, Calleigh was making a phone call of her own. An hour after that, as the setting sun cast a golden light down the nearly empty glass filled hallways and reflected eerily from the dark floor, she was facing Houghton Van Meer and his lawyer. Frank was standing off to one side, his small mouth pursed as if to guard any words that might want to leap out.

"Mr. Van Meer, you were at Freddy's Firewater Stand the night your son was murdered."

"What is your evidence, Miss Duquesne?" The lawyer was perhaps Mr. Van Meer's age or close to it only instead of gaunt, his face was pudgy.

"Lieutenant Duquesne." There was no doubt about what title she wanted the lawyer to use to address her. "And my evidence is the epithelials found in the push handle of the emergency door at the back of the club."

"Left when?"

"Unless Mr. Van Meer and several other people all have a habit of frequently using that door which is rigged with an alarm, I'd say he left his skin cells the night his son was shot."

The lawyer leaned into his client and put his hand up to shield his client's lips from view. After two inaudible exchanges, the lawyer sat back. "My client's presence in the club that night is no indicator of guilt. The very notion that he would shoot his own son is revolting." He breathed heavily into his gray walrus style mustache.

Without a pause, Calleigh turned to Houghton Van Meer. "You liked Linda McGrue, didn't you? You thought she was a good match for your son. That was why you said you couldn't remember the names of the other girls. You knew they weren't going to marry your money poor son."

After another brief consult behind a raised hand, the lawyer said, "And look at what misplaced 'liking' did. Ms. McGrue shot his son."

Ignoring the remark, Calleigh continued. "You didn't like that your son liked to act like a player. Maybe he wasn't a player so much as hoping that he could get himself a good catch, one of those rich girls whose family had much more than he would ever have. Yet, to hedge his bets, he wanted to keep Linda around, just in case no one else would take him."

"You were at the club early, weren't you, Mr. Van Meer? You were sitting in one of the corners across the room before the club filled up. You had a very good view of your son in the booth, didn't you? You were glad when you saw Sean and Linda together, when you saw them kiss. Then, you saw the other girls show up after Linda had gone to the powder room. You'd seen Sean and the girls be silly around your pool but Linda had never been around then. This was a new dynamic and you didn't like it. No man in your family was anything but chivalrous to a woman. No man behaved the way Sean did."

The lawyer, a short man with an unfortunately large nose and pointed chin, took on a look of crafty confidence.

"By this time, the club was filling up. Hidden by the moving people, you got closer. Just as Linda came down the hall, the shooting started. You saw Sean rise and push the other girls out of the way so he could get up from the table and escape the bullets. At the same time, you saw Linda pulling a gun from her purse. Before she could shoot, you took the gun from her, shot your own son, and then told Linda to leave adding, 'forget about what happened, just forget about it'."

The lawyer purred softly, "Oh really? And then what happened, Miss…Lieutenant Duquesne?"

"He left by the same route as Linda had, through the fire door. Only, as he left, he left a bit of skin. Skin deteriorates at a specific rate, just like dead bodies Then he wiped the fingerprints from the gun handle and just before he ran down the alley and into the street to his car, he threw the gun at the dumpster. It didn't make it into the dumpster but hit the wall and slid under it. In a way, this was fortunate. You see, most small guns when held in large hands have a bite. It's hard to steady the gun and not have a bit of hide taken by the firing action. If the gun had made it into the dumpster, the skin in that slide might have been contaminated by all the food and rot. Even though the area under the dumpster was slimy, it wasn't deep enough to reach into the area where the skin cells had been caught. That makes two bits of skin we found."

The not so cocky lawyer leaned over to his client. This time the conference took nearly a minute. Finally, the lawyer leaned back to an upright position and said steadfastly, "My client denies any knowledge of that gun or anything that happened at Freddy's Firewater Stand the night his son was killed."

"The law has other ideas about that. Mr. Van Meer, we have a warrant for your arrest. Please stand."

Up to now, the elderly gentleman had been sitting passively, staring down at the table while all of the talk above his generous shock of silver hair went on. Now, before the officers could advance, he sat straight and looked at Calleigh for the first time. "May I say something?"

His lawyer tried to lean over to speak into his client's ear but Mr. Van Meer put up his hand and staid him. "No, my friend, I shall speak now. It is the least I can do."

He turned his attention back to Calleigh. "You see, Lieutenant, my family raised me with a strong sense of honor. My grandfather and grandmother came from Holland. They worked their asses off to earn money in this new land. My grandfather learned carpentry and helped to build some of the older mansions that are around here. My grandmother cooked lunches and sold them to the men my grandfather worked with. My father learned the landscaping business to finish off the houses his father was building. My mother was Cuban and developed her mother-in-law's business into a restaurant. I took it all in and made a fair living if I do say so, myself."

"That does not excuse—" Calleigh began. She was stopped by a raised hand.

"Please, it is important to me to finish. My point in this is to say that honor was the most important thing in my family. Many of the houses my grandfather built stand because he did his craft well. I can still point to trees and bushes my father planted. My grandmother's recipes combined with my mother's still grace the menu of the restaurant I own. My own patios still stand as well as much else of what I did myself because I did it all with honor."

For a brief moment, Mr. Van Meer paused, swallowing hard. "Honor is not just a work ethic but it is how we live, what we live by. We are supposed to have standards. I think I succeeded in passing those qualities to my three older children. In fact, I did it so well, I felt quite confident in their success in life to deny them inheriting anything from me. They would have no time or interest in my life's business if they did get it. So, Sean was the logical choice to carry on for me. Then I began to see Sean for what he was. You see, my father pointed out to me that you can tell how honorable a man is by how he treats the women in his life."

Slowly, ever so slowly, the man in front of Calleigh was aging and withering away. The hollows under his cheekbones drew inward and even his eyes seemed to sink.

"I was so determined to be proud of my son, my heir, I ignored the signs from the beginning. He was troublesome to the nannies I had to hire to care for him. I would explain how he had to respect them and he would say he understood and then do the same things all over. I think he had six in all, most who left in disgust. He did well enough in school so I didn't see the next signs until his college days when he never seemed to have just one girlfriend. I just chalked it up to sewing his wild oats. When he finally started bringing Linda around, I thought, 'ah, this is it. Now he'll settle down.' Well, he didn't. Oh, how I suffered for that poor little girl. I don't think he knew how much I heard of the goings on in that house.

I guess, that night, in the club, I knew I had to do something. You know, it's funny, I didn't know about the other shootings that started it all until the next day. I don't remember hearing the noise. All I know is, I saw Linda coming down the hallway pulling a gun out of her purse. Suddenly, I was there, taking it, seeing Sean pushing his girlfriends out of his way in panic, not helping them and then I knew what had to be done."

"Don't say it, Juan." His lawyer bent down and peered up into his client's face trying to stop him from committing himself to prison or worse.

"No, I did it to save my family's honor! It's an awful thing! No one should have to say I shot my son." Mr. Van Meer wilted and spent, nearly disappeared into his clothing.

Calleigh paused, shocked and satisfied at the same time, before she asked, "For verification that you did indeed commit the crime, I need to ask, was he facing you or did he have his back to you?"

"He was facing me, about five feet away. I think I shot him in the heart."

Calleigh checked the medical examiner's report, word for word, as well as the forensic findings on the clothing. In summary, Sean Van Meer had been shot in the aorta from a distance of five to seven feet.

"I know you think you had a good excuse but I'm afraid the law just doesn't see it that way." Nodding at the officers, she stood back while the old man was handcuffed and led away.

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

The day crew of the CSI lab was a well oiled machine, working in sync with each other with little or no guidance most of the time. They all knew their jobs, knew procedures and where to put results if the proper hands weren't immediately available. This day, in particular, was one of those days and so, no one noticed Horatio's absence from the afternoon and into the evening.

To anyone's view of the redhead, he looked like he was simply filling out the paperwork necessary following the arrest of Officer Price. After each signature, he slipped the paper into a folder that visibly grew in thickness with each passing second. Each document was accompanied by reports he'd approved or with photographs.

Working at top speed, his mind sped wildly, hardly paying attention to the work that was so familiar after so many years on the force. He wanted to get this done! Get it over with! Get out! Get away!

He gave one last glance at Price's confession. It was the usual excuses of needing relief from the stresses of the job, just wanting a woman to sit beside him for a moment. 'The problem was, none of them wanted to 'give.' It was hard to know who would do what just by what car they were driving. Then he'd seen Mitzi in her car and suddenly realized she was the answer. She was friendly, real friendly and he thought he seen her glance his way at the station more than once. He'd stopped her on the road and accused her of erratic driving and then signaled her to follow him. Once at the Flats Farm, he'd had her get out and then gone to stand by her very closely, arm to shoulder (she was shorter than he) to gain her trust. It was only after she'd gotten all nervous and refused his advances that he realized his mistake. He couldn't let her go tell her father what had happened. He was so sure he hadn't left any telltale clues! Then, a couple of nights later, he'd encountered that Duda chick, well, that was sort of an accident. Yeah, he'd gotten carried away. God Damn! But he was so horny having a woman that close just drove him insane! So, there she was pushing away bent over the railing and he realized he wasn't going to get anywhere so he just lowered one hand to the back of her leg just above the knee, grabbed hard and tipped up. Done! What was a guy to do? He was a good cop. Other guys got away with stuff, why couldn't he?'

When he had heard the words they had hurt and reading them now was worse. His head pounding, his gut in turmoil, he didn't bother to recheck the three inch thick file after slipping the last paper inside. Slapping the cover shut, he scooped it up and walked briskly to his office door, trod heavily down the stairs and with purposeful steps, went to the evidence locker. He signed the box out, made sure the officer in charge of the room was watching, slipped the folder inside, put the top back on and handed it back to the officer who returned it to its place on the shelf. He signed the box back in and as he paced in those long strides to the elevator, he pulled out his phone.

"Frank, I've done the paperwork on Officer Price. It's all in the box in the evidence locker. I'm on my way out."

He knew Frank wouldn't expect any more explanation which is why he had called the Detective Sergeant. The team members might ask but not the Texan. He didn't care to explain anything right now. Hell! Even he didn't even know what he was doing at the moment. Keeping his eyes directed to the floor in front of him, he hoped he wouldn't pass Calleigh, Eric, or Ryan. All three of them could read him like a book and would be worried.

He couldn't even sigh in relief when he reached the elevator. It could stop on the first floor and open to any of the team, including Sally. The garage was a minefield of its own kind since he always parked on the far side so he could have the pleasure of walking.

Finally, reaching his car, unseen by anyone who cared, he left a black mark on the pavement as a comment on his mood.

He had always liked that Miami wasn't that large; thus, before he knew it, he was headed north, out among pines on a nearly empty road. Ordinarily, when he took time to take his toy (his car) out to stretch its legs, to let it roar, he was enjoying himself. Taking the car out was like going for a jog in the early morning hours, filling his own lungs with air, feeling his leg muscles stretch and push him along. Now it wasn't a pleasure; it was just something he seemed motivated to do, for no reason. The throaty growl of the engine was his own voice telling others to beware of his presence. He knew it wasn't the answer for what ailed him. Maybe there was another answer. Maybe he could make an effort to do something else but for the life of him, he wasn't sure what.

He knew the cause of his unease; he'd just arrested a fellow officer on several counts of sexual assault and two counts of murder. For several days, he'd been in denial, thinking how to interpret the evidence differently. That much thought took a huge amount of energy. Usually, he just let the evidence speak for itself, didn't bother to make it be one thing or another. Once he'd faced it, done what he had to do, he felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach.

He'd long stopped trying to understand why anyone would hurt others, kill others. There were too many reasons and none were of his concern. His job was to stop the bad guys, plain and simple. He used evidence to catch people and found evidence by the use of forensics.

It was just that police officers weren't people! No, amend that; police officers on the job weren't just people. All police officers took an oath in some form or other that meant 'To Protect and Serve.' How could a man or woman take that oath and then break it?

The roaring engine warned him he was nearing a hundred miles an hour and he eased his foot off the gas pedal until he came to a stop at a slender pull off beside the endless pine tree lined road. He sat with the engine idling for a few moments, considering what to do. The sun had eased down past the tops of the branches. The usual afternoon thunderheads to the east rose in salmon and gray magnificence against the sky that matched the eyes that surveyed it.

Since driving like an idiot wasn't helping, Horatio decided to head home. Checking behind him, he eased the clutch into first gear and by the time he hit second, he was headed across the green belt between the two double lane roads headed in opposite directions. Thirty seconds later, he was driving down the empty road toward Miami.

Half an hour later, Horatio Caine made the same mistake that too many people make in an area of tall trees. Laws in most states require drivers to turn their headlights on at sunset to avoid driving in the shadows of dusk. Surrounded by trees, however, it's difficult to know when the sun has set and the shadows aren't just those cast by the trees.

Still wrestling with his demons, wishing he could have found some way to make that officer not guilty, Horatio Caine drove his red 1958 MG A 1500 with 1489 cc engine with 72 hp (54kw) into a cow that was strolling lazily down the highway, looking for the road home.

"Calleigh! Cal! I think he's waking up."

All Horatio could see through the haze in front of him was a gray outline blotched with pink.

"I'll go get Eric and Ryan.

"Hey Horatio, welcome back to the world." This outline was yellow with a large smile in the center.

"H! You're back with us."

Voices were becoming familiar.

"You gave us a scare. You decided to pay us back for all the times we worried you? It can be a bitch, huh?"

"Everyone at the lab sends their best, Horatio."

"Yeah, I guess now that you're awake, we should head back."

"Yeah, Sally will stay with you and keep us apprised."

"Oh, and H? Your car is a mess. They're still trying to separate out the red car from bloody cow out there."

"Geez! How fast were you going?" Ryan sounded very sincere.

"Hey, give the man a chance to talk. Could be he has no idea what you're talking about." Sally stood at the foot of the bed.

His vision cleared now, Horatio glanced around and tried to smile, not sure if he was achieving the goal. He was sure his face was more hamburger than nose, mouth, and eyes. "I know what you're talking about. Nice to see you too. Thanks for the update."

Eric leaned forward and grinned in a lopsided manner. "By the way, your face is a great poster picture for the use of seatbelts."

As expected, everyone pushed and pulled on the Cuban-Russian out of the room, laughing in spite of themselves.

Calleigh sang on her way out from the doorway, "Get well. We'll be back."

Horatio lay still for the several seconds Sally stood silent at the foot of the bed.

Finally she came to stand at the side of the bed where there weren't so many machines. "So, what was going on? I don't think what happened out there was really just a chance accident."

He didn't even attempt a smile this time. "Maybe later. Any word on when they're going to release me?"

"Beats me. They were waiting to see if you were going to wake up first. You've got a concussion, your face is a mess, you have a cracked sternum, and three ribs with multiple fractures. The doctor will be in sometime."

"Where's my phone?"

"Here."

He sighed. "Look, you don't have to stay."

"Like you can get rid of me! No, I'm staying at least until the doctor comes. If nothing else, your team will want an update on your prognosis."

After his eyes wandered over Sally's face and form, they drifted to the guardrail on the bed. He noticed the controls built into the rail and pushed the one to lift his head. He was already on an upward slant but had reason to want more. Once he was up as far as was comfortable, the injured man motioned for Sally to approach.

At first her face showed how puzzled she was but as he kept motioning her closer and closer, she got the idea. Gently as she could, she kissed him on his lips that bore cracks in two places and almost laughed as he tried to smile his pleasure but could only wince at the effort.

Later, both thanked their lucky stars that the doctor came in when she did; they had run out of small talk such as what time it was, what the weather was, which hospital it was, how they'd all been informed and so on.

"Lieutenant Caine, my name is Doctor Guptjaya." Her accent was light but definite. "You had a run in with a cow? You are a very lucky man. The cow, not so much, yes?"

Without the least trace of recalcitrance, Horatio said evenly, "Yes, ma'am, I realize that."

"However, none of your injuries are life threatening. We did CATscans as soon as you were brought in and there are no internal injuries. There are bruises to your skull and your sternum, and three ribs are cracked, but that is much better than what you could have suffered. Right now, I'd like to see you get up and walk, please."

Four hours later, several hours after the doctor's objections, Horatio tried to be patient while he allowed Sally to unlock the door to his condo. He wanted nothing more than to lay down, and waiting to do it was almost more than he could tolerate.

Half an hour later, after surprising Sally with a request that she lay in bed with him, he surprised her even more. Once she was settled, as uncomfortable as it was for him, he laid his head on her chest and curled up into fetal position. Here, he began crying. It was not a silent, manly expression of grief but a quiet, tearful wail.

Sally wasn't sure what was going on but was glad she was there to hear it. She wrapped her arms around the bruised shoulders and held on as tenderly as she could. Long experience had long ago told her not to try to hush such release but to allow it to flow for as long as was necessary.

Twenty minutes later, the flood of angst slowed. Finally, he let out a big sigh and seemed to relax; a few minutes after that, she felt it was safe to probe. From the way he had been holding on to her, Sally sensed Horatio wasn't in physical pain so much as psychological. "Hey, luv, would you care to talk about what was going on with you? Making hamburgers on the highway just doesn't seem to be your style." She handed him a hankie.

They talked for several hours off and on about Horatio's shock of having to arrest an officer. When he was more rested, he insisted on going outside. At one point, resting comfortably on the patio couch supported by pillows, he said, "Tens of thousands of us work extremely hard to build the people's trust in us."

"You know, when most of the others in blue find a member who's done the service wrong, they just turn their backs and go on about their lives and their business. Maybe you take it one step too seriously." Sally was leaning against the railing, enjoying the late evening breeze.

Looking out to the green water of the great Atlantic Ocean, Horatio wondered seriously about the question Sally was posing. Of all the unpleasant things police officers had to do, this was one that hit him in the gut worse than seeing innocents who had been killed, worse than shooting the bad guys no matter what the circumstances. Everything he stood for had been taken so lightly by this fool in a uniform. He knew he wasn't wrong but oh, God, it hurt so much.

Nearly half an hour went by before Sally heard a very quiet, "No, I don't."

The End


End file.
